Editing Georges Bizet (section)

===Orchestral, piano and vocal works===

After his early Symphony in C, Bizet's purely orchestral output is sparse. The ''Roma'' symphony over which he laboured for more than eight years compares poorly, in Dean's view, with its juvenile predecessor. The work, says Dean, owes something to Gounod and contains passages that recall [[Carl Maria von Weber|Weber]] and [[Felix Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn]]. However, Dean contends that the work suffers from poor organisation and an excess of pretentious music; he calls it a "misfire". Bizet's other mature orchestral work, the overture ''Patrie'', is similarly dismissed: "an awful warning of the danger of confusing art with patriotism".<ref>Dean (1965), pp. 141–145</ref>

The musicologist [[Hugh Macdonald (musicologist)|Hugh Macdonald]] argues that Bizet's best orchestral music is found in the suites that he derived from the 12-movement ''Jeux d’enfants'' for piano four-hands (1871) and the ''musique de scène'' for Daudet's play ''L’Arlésienne'' (1872): ''Jeux'' resulted in the ''Petite suite'' of 1873, which has five movements ''(Marche—Berceuse—Impromptu—Duo—Galop)'', while the ''musique de scène'' resulted in two suites, one from the year of the premiere compiled by Bizet ''(Prélude—Menuet—Adagietto—Carillon)'' and the other from 1879 compiled posthumously by Guiraud ''(Pastorale—Intermezzo—Menuet—Farandole)''. According to Macdonald, in all three Bizet demonstrates a maturity of style that, had he lived longer, might have been the basis for future great orchestral works.<ref name= OMO/>

Bizet's piano works have not entered the concert pianist's repertoire and are generally too difficult for amateurs to attempt. The exception is the above-described ''Jeux d’enfants'' duet suite; here Bizet avoids the virtuoso passages that so dominate his solo music.<ref name= OMO/> The early solo pieces bear the influence of Chopin; later works, such as the ''Variations chromatiques'' or the ''Chasse fantastique'', owe more to Liszt.<ref>{{cite journal|last= Ashley|first= Tim|title= Bizet: Complete Music for Solo Piano&nbsp;– review|url= https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/10/bizet-solo-piano-review|journal= The Guardian|date= 10 March 2011}}</ref>

Most of Bizet's songs were written in the period 1866–68. Dean defines the main weaknesses in these songs as an unimaginative repetition of the same music for each verse, and a tendency to write for the orchestra rather than the voice.<ref>Dean (1965), p. 152</ref> Much of Bizet's larger-scale vocal music is lost; the early ''Te Deum'', which survives in full, is rejected by Dean as "a wretched work [that] merely illustrates Bizet's unfitness to write religious music."<ref>Dean (1965), p. 157</ref>