 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 Weber and 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 " . The musicologist Hugh Macdonald argues that Bizet 's best orchestral music is found in the suites that he derived respectively from the piano work Jeux d 'enfants and the incidental music for L 'Arlésienne . In these he demonstrates a maturity of style that , had he lived longer , might have been the basis for future great orchestral works . 
