Bizet, G :: Carmen Prelude Second Edition

Musicians Publications presents Georges Bizet s Carmen Prelude arranged for woodwind quintet by Bill Holcombe and Bill Holcombe Jr. This quintet taken from the Carmen Suite is scored for flute, oboe, clarinet, French horn, and bassoon is intermediate-advanced in difficulty and 2:00 in duration.

The Carmen Suite No. 1 s short Prelude introduces the ominous theme that the opera associates with both Carmen and her fate at the hands of her lover Don Jose. This leads without pause into the Aragonaise: festive yet delicate and sinuous music that opens Act IV (the final act) as crowds arrive for a parade and bullfight. Next, the lyrical Intermezzo (the Prelude to Act III) features ravishing woodwind melodies. The Seguedille that follows is an orchestral arrangement of Carmen s Act I aria in which she seduces Don Jose into letting her free and meeting her at her friend Lillas Pastia s tavern. (She has been arrested for brawling with another woman, and Don Jose is assigned to take her to jail. A seguidilla is a type of Castilian folksong.) Les dragons d Alcala (The Dragoons of Alcala) is a jaunty march that forms the opera s Prelude to Act II; later in the act Jose is heard singing it offstage as he approaches Pastia s inn. Les Toreadors is the rousing finale of the suite: in the opera it is actually the very opening music, preceding the fateful Carmen theme, and is heard again at the end of the opera, when the Carmen theme interrupts it even more jarringly. In this number we briefly hear the toreador Escamillo s song, to be presented more fully in the second suite. -Sheboygan Symphony Orchestra, 2014