Bagatelle (music)

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The bagatelle ( French bagatell [e] for "little thing, love") describes a small work of instrumental music , mostly for piano.

The special use of the term in the music world goes back to the French composer François Couperin , in whose 10ème ordre de clavecin from 1717 a piece bears the title "Rondeau - les bagatelles". If the name is used here to characterize a small character piece, the term only got its special meaning in Beethoven . A first series of bagatelles for piano from the years 1794 to 1823, published as opus 119 by various publishers as a so-called “ pirated print ”, was initially unsuccessful. The Leipzig publisher Carl Friedrich Peters, to whom Beethoven had offered them for publishing, rejected them as "too small" and did not expect the technically and musically unbalanced miniatures to be a commercial success. But during his work on the last three piano sonatas op. 109-111, Beethoven's compositional technique had changed again, and so the “Bagatelles” op. 126 published in 1824 are in truth a formally and expressively balanced series of musical aphorisms. The composer emphasized in his letters “that they are not only completely new, but also longer than usual and 'somewhat more elaborate', 'probably the best of their kind'”. Following on from this, Franz Liszt wrote a “Bagatelle sans tonalité” for piano in 1885. Written by Antonin Dvorak originate five "trivia" for Streichtrio and Harmonium op. 74 (1778). In the 20th century it was Béla Bartók - for piano op. 6 (1908) - and Anton von Webern with his string quartet op.9 (1911) who took up the label "Bagatelle" again. In 1942, Theodor W. Adorno gave a collection of six songs with piano accompaniment the title "Bagatelles" (Opus 6), thereby aiming at the special meaning that has been associated with the term "Bagatelle" since Beethoven: Although it is miniature-like brevity and outwardly as " Insignificance ”, they speak an unusual musical language and address existentially important questions.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. Erich Weis / Heinrich Mattutat (ed.): Ponds: French-German / German-French. Ernst Klett Verlag, Stuttgart, 1986, p. 43.
  2. See Meyer's little lexicon: Music . Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1986, p. 33 f.
  3. Quoted from: Jan Caeyers, Beethoven , München (Beck) 2015, p. 645.
  4. ^ Jan Caeyers, Beethoven , Munich (Beck) 2015, p. 655.
  5. See Meyer's little lexicon: Music . Mannheim / Vienna / Zurich 1986, p. 34.