Elf Neue Bagatellen nach L.v.B. op. 119

Drei Neue Bagatellen op. 119 nach L.v.B. were composed in September 2020 for a concert in Gasteig as a string quartet contribution to the Beethoven year.

As a schoolboy I heard the Elf Neue Bagatellen op. 119 for piano played by Claudio Arrau and recall my quizzical reaction at the time. Rarely played, they remain somewhat enigmatic works, like short sketches, fleeting fragments of larger pieces which the composer had neither the time nor patience to work out fully.

From the original Elf Neue Bagatellen I selected three (nos 1, 8, 6) and re-constructed them for string quartet. The musical substance adheres closely to the piano version, but for the re-fashioning the music for quartet. The original piano writing is often two- or three-part, necessitating extra voices for a complete string quartet texture. 

I was struck by how idiomatically the phrases and contours of Beethoven's piano music fitted onto stringed instruments. Despite the conjectures that much of Beethoven's writing emanated from his skill as pianist and improviser, his train of thought, even whilst writing for piano, appeared to be guided largely by the contrapuntal combination of instrumental melodic lines. Graham Waterhouse