7 Bagatelles

Beethoven composed bagatelles—he called them Kleinigkeiten or “trifles”—throughout his career. Free-standing works, they had no fixed structure but could range from simple miniatures, easily within the reach of amateur pianists, to movements rejected from sonatas, although none is of the complexity of a sonata first movement. Many, such as the ubiquitous “Für Elise”, remained in manuscript, although he collected together three sets for publication, the first of which, Op. 33 (1803), gathers seven pieces that in some cases date back over two decades, to his childhood. None lasts much more than three and a half minutes but each bagatelle is intricately characterised, the contrasts between and within them giving the set unity. Thus the sweetly tuneful first piece gives way to the quirky “Scherzo” of the second, the lilting “Allegretto” of the third and the wistful, lullaby-like fourth. The rippling arpeggios and quicksilver triplets of the fifth are answered by the chastely expressive sixth, before the whirring energy of the seventh spins the collection to a close.