Classical Music | Music for Fortepiano

Recorded on 10/21/1991, uploaded on 03/21/2011

Musician's or Publisher's Notes

The eleven bagatelles of opus 119, despite the late opus number, do not all date from Beethoven’s final period. The first five were actually sketched as early as the 1790s, possibly among other fragments of a piano sonata or some keyboard work, and completed around 1803. Nevertheless, the bagatelles were never published. In 1820, he composed five more bagatelles, which were published the following year. Beethoven then later returned to the sketches he had made decades earlier. After revising them, and adding another piece to serve as a sort of bridge between the two groups of five, all eleven were sent to England for publication in 1823. Some have argued that Beethoven did not intend all eleven pieces to be published as one collection, pointing to the marked differences in the style of Beethoven’s early and late periods. However, the composer expressed no dissatisfaction at the printed edition of his bagatelles. Furthermore, the sixth bagatelle creates a convincing link, across some twenty years, between the fifth and seventh pieces.

Among the later bagatelles of opus 119, No. 9 in A minor is an anxious little waltz. It begins with an impetuously rising broken chord figure which then falls languorously through a Neopolitan sixth into a cadence. A mere twenty measures in length (not counting repeats), this bagatelle is a restless miniature that seems to hold more than its diminutive frame would otherwise suggest. Last in the set, No. 11 in B-flat major, is a certain product of Beethoven’s final period. A lyrical Andante, it possesses a characteristic melodic simplicity and charm, as well as an organic growth that transcends the fixed nature of the standard forms.    Joseph DuBose