Seven Bagatelles Op.33 (1802)

The more eccentric Beethoven’s shorter piano pieces the more likely they were to end up as bagatelles. It is true that the Op.33 Bagatelles are neither as short nor as eccentric as those of Op.119, the next set in the series, but at least twenty years and a whole new dimension in Beethoven’s development came between them. What he was bold enough to publish in 1822 he wouldn’t even have thought of in 1802.

Even so, for a piece written at the same time as the Second Symphony (or still earlier perhaps) the Bagatelle in E flat is eccentric enough. Straightforward in its ternary form, unsurprising in its decorative figuration, charming in its melodic content, it is also disconcertingly aggressive as it gets hold of an unsuspecting four-note phrase, shakes it in its teeth and castigates it in angry downward scales. No.2 in C is of a less uncertain humour, in spite of its suddenly passionate episode in A minor. Reassuringly, the composer himself labelled it as a Scherzo and the grotesque element in it is no more than a matter of forcibly displacing the rhythmic emphasis from the first beat of the bar.

Although a desirable quality in a Beethoven bagetelle, eccentrictiy is clearly not a necessary qualification. No.3 in F is peculiar only in the charmingly innocent way it has of slippping into D major and out again, while No.4 in A is a placid Andante with a rather more agitated middle section in the minor. No.5 in C, on the other hand, exults in the extravagantly wide leaps of its main theme, gets rather cross in the middle and has an apparent failure in confidence as it winds itself up to take its last fortissimo leaps. Like some of the late-period bagatelles, No.6 in D is a kind of experiment. “Con una certa expressione parlando” is the composer’s instruction to the pianist and, indeed, although it begins as a song without words, it develops with the spontaneity of a recitative avoiding the ternary symmetry observed by most of the others. As for No.7 in A flat, propelled on its vigorous left-hand ostinato, it sounds like a parody of the “Waldstein” Sonata Beethoven was to write a couple of years later.