A new semiempirical scheme, referred to as NDDO-G, for calculating geometries and spectroscopic properties of molecules, is described. The method is based on the NDDO (neglect of diatomic differential overlap) approximation. It uses the point-charge model and the Mataga-Nishimoto formula to evaluate two-center two-electron integrals. The NDDO-G model has been parametrized for the elements H, C, N, and O. Molecular geometries of organic molecules are well predicted by NDDO-G; for 60 molecules, the mean absolute error of bond lengths is 0.014 Angstrom and that of bond angles is 1.9 degrees. The spectroscopic variant of the NDDO-G scheme provides electronic excitations using configuration interaction of singly excited states (CIS). It has been applied to calculate absorption spectra (vertical transitions) of several dozens organic molecules and photoelectron spectra within Koopmans' approximation. These NDDO-G results are compared with experimental results and with results of high-level ab initio calculations. The mean absolute error of NDDO-G excitation energies is 0.13 eV = 1050 cm(-1) (196 comparisons). First and several higher ionization potentials are reproduced with a mean absolute error of 0.24 eV (123 comparisons). The proposed method may be used for studying structures of large organic and biological molecules and for interpreting and predicting their absorption and photoelectron spectra. As an example, we discuss the spectroscopy of free-base porphin.