The work has a curious history. For nearly 80 years the autograph score lay unknown to the world until it was brought to the attention of Weingartner, who gave the first performance in Basle in February 1935. The reason for this is unclear, but it is possible that Bizet wished to suppress the work because he felt that it had too many parallels with Gounod's first symphony, which he had recently arranged for piano duet.

The symphony is in the classical four movement form, and is scored for an orchestra of moderate size, without trombones or harp. Despite the similarities with the Gounod symphony, in the first movement particularly a resemblance to Schubert is more noticeable, although this must have been coincidental since the latter's music was totally unknown in Paris at the time. Schubertian characteristics include glances at the relative minor, modulations to remote keys, but above all the flow of singing melody.

The scherzo typifies the exuberance that Bizet brought to French music, but also has unusual technical aspects. The first theme, for example, with its lilting rhythm not only supplies a counterpoint to the delightful theme for strings in octaves that follows, but also forms the chief material for the trio, with its drone bass and masterly use of woodwind.

Carmen is again brought to mind in the finale, in which the opening looks forward to the bull-fighting music as surely as the march-like bridge passage does to the chorus of street urchins.

In later years Bizet confided to Saint-Saëns that he "could do nothing without the theatre; he was not made for the symphony". The surprising thing is that this youthful masterpiece has so much genuine symphonic quality;- originality, a sense of balance, and orchestration which fully understands the potentialities of each instrument.