Throughout history, gypsy culture has developed a mysticism about it that has been pondered by many artists—both in the musical sense and through other creative expressions. George Bizet, a famed French Romantic Era composer, artfully presents the tragic story of Carmen, based on Prosper Mérimée’s famed novella, using unique and captivating expressions in his music to explore the gypsy realm. In the opera, Carmen, the heroine, is a young gypsy woman from Seville, Spain who has a wild and inconsistent love life and becomes involved with a soldier named Don José. Don José, captivated by Carmen’s seductive prowess, soon becomes dependent on Carmen’s love for him, and when she moves on, it drives him into a passionate anger, which ultimately leads to his murder of her. In this particular aria, “En vain pour éviter”, Carmen discovers that both her fate and Don José’s are sealed with death, and as she tries to avoid it, she realizes it is inevitable. George Bizet mimics Carmen’s attempted elusion of fate through the use of secondary chords, relative keys, and extensions of the dominant function, as to avoid tonic, which represents her death. In addition, Bizet manages to establish a sense of ambiguity to Carmen’s view of her fate through unusual progressions and breaking of sequences. (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
Secondary chords have a very specific function throughout this piece. Beginning at measure 38, there is a pedal of F in the bass line, as well of the use of a fully diminished vii43/iv chord that moves to a iv64 chord in measure 40 as Carmen sings, “In vain, in order to avoid harsh remarks, in vain you shuffle, that settles nothing”. The use of the secondary chord in this particular setting plays into the lyrics that discuss C...
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...ions into relative keys, as well as sequencing and abnormal progressions adds to the mysticism and ambiguity of both Carmen’s fate and the gypsy world. Word painting is heavily incorporated and intentional throughout the aria. Bizet’s character of Carmen is strong and free, which is shown through the fact that she fights against tonic up until the very end, extending the dominant section as long as possible before finally surrendering to her fate. The intentional correlation between the lyrical and musical structure of this song and the gypsy-like sound sets this aria apart from many others and makes it interesting to analyze and listen to.
Works Cited
"Georges Bizet." Encyclopaedia Britannica. Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 17 Dec. 2013. .
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