The Bagatelles, Op. 126 are six pieces for solo piano composed by

Ludwig van Beethoven Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. He is one of the most revered figures in the history of Western music; his works rank among the most performed of the classical music repertoire ...

. They were composed in 1824 and published the next year in his career, in 1825. Beethoven dedicated them to his brother

Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven Nikolaus Johann van Beethoven (2 October 1776 – 12 January 1848) was a German landowner and a brother of the composer Ludwig van Beethoven. Life He was born in Bonn, youngest son of Johann van Beethoven and his wife Maria Magdalena Keverich. ...

(1776–1848), and wrote to his publisher,

Schott Music Schott Music () is one of the oldest German music publishers. It is also one of the largest music publishing houses in Europe, and is the second-oldest music publisher after Breitkopf & Härtel. The company headquarters of Schott Music were foun ...

, that the Opus 126 Bagatelles "are probably the best I've written".von Irmer (1975, 7)

Form

bagatelle Bagatelle (from the Château de Bagatelle) is a billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls (set at nine in the 19th century) past wooden pins (which act as obstacles) into holes that are guarded by wood ...

, in Beethoven's usage, is a kind of brief

character piece A character piece is a musical composition which is expressive of a specific mood or non-musical idea. History The first appearance of the term "character piece" is in the ''avertissement'' (preface) to Marin Marais's fifth book of viola da gamba ...

. The set comprises six short works, as follows: #Andante con moto, Cantabile e compiacevole, G major, #Allegro, G minor, #Andante, Cantabile e grazioso, E major, #Presto, B minor, #Quasi allegretto, G major, #Presto, cut time then Andante amabile e con moto, E major, In prefatory remarks to his edition of the works, Otto von Irmer notes that Beethoven intended the six bagatelles be played in order as a single work, at least insofar as this can be inferred from a marginal annotation Beethoven made in the manuscript: "Ciclus von Kleinigkeiten" (cycle of little pieces).

Lewis Lockwood Lewis H. Lockwood (born December 16, 1930) is an American musicologist whose main fields are the music of the Italian Renaissance and the life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven. Joseph Kerman described him as "a leading musical scholar of the postw ...

suggests another reason to regard the work as a unity rather than a collection: starting with the second Bagatelle, the keys of the pieces fall in a regular succession of descending

major third In music theory, a third is a Interval (music), musical interval encompassing three staff positions (see Interval (music)#Number, Interval number for more details), and the major third () is a third spanning four Semitone, half steps or two ...

s, a pattern Lockwood also notices in Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 "Eroica" and the String Quartet No. 12, Op. 127.Lockwood (2005, 398)

Analysis

Maurice J. E. Brown, writing in the '' Grove Dictionary'', says of the Bagatelles that they "are thoroughly typical of their composer and show affinities with the greater instrumental works written at the same time." Some possible such affinities are as follows: No. 1 shares the terse, elliptical expression of the first movement of the Piano Sonata, Op. 101; No. 3 shares the style of elaborate, high-register elaboration of a slow melody in triple time, seen in the slow movement of the ''Hammerklavier Sonata''; and the final Bagatelle opens with a chaotic passage reminiscent of the opening of the finale of the Ninth Symphony.

Notes

References

*Levy, David B., "Notes", second series, vol. 44, no. 3 (March 1988), pp. 555–557. *''

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language '' Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and th ...

'', online edition, article "Bagatelle"; the article written by Maurice J. E. Brown, Copyright 2008, Oxford University Press. * Lockwood, Lewis (2005), ''Beethoven: The Music and the Life''. W. W. Norton. *von Irmer, Otto (1975) (ed.), ''Beethoven: Klavierstücke''. G. Henle Verlag, Munich.

External links

* * A visual analysis of the Bagatelles: {{Authority control Piano solos by Ludwig van Beethoven 1823 compositions Beethoven, Op. 126

Form

Analysis

See also

Notes

References

External links