Bagatelle (music)

A bagatelle is a short piece of music, typically for the

band, voice and piano, and a cappella choir

Earliest known bagatelle

The best-known bagatelles are probably those by

Op. 47), and sets by Bedřich Smetana, Alexander Tcherepnin and Jean Sibelius. Anton Diabelli also wrote a bagatelle in a short, happy form. Camille Saint-Saëns wrote Six Bagatelles, Op. 3, and Friedrich Baumfelder

In the 20th century, several composers have written sets of bagatelles, including Béla Bartók, who wrote a set of fourteen (Op. 6); Anton Webern, who wrote a set of six for string quartet (Op. 9); Gerald Finzi, who wrote Five Bagatelles for clarinet and piano; Alan Hovhaness, who wrote Four Bagatelles for string quartet (Op. 30). Another canonical modern bagatelle is the set by György Ligeti, who originally composed a set of eleven short works for piano entitled Musica Ricercata (1951–53), and later arranged a selection of them as Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet (1953).^{[citation needed]}

The

Piano Sonata in F minor, are among the composer's few regularly performed works. William Walton also wrote Five Bagatelles for the classical guitar for Julian Bream dedicated to composer Malcolm Arnold around 1970.^[4] These five pieces have been recorded by several eminent classical guitarists including Julian Bream, Sharon Isbin, Christopher Parkening, and Ana Vidović. The American composer Charles Wuorinen wrote a Bagatelle for solo piano, which he later orchestrated. The Australian composer Carl Vine also wrote Five Bagatelles for piano (1994), which are quite frequently performed at piano competitions, especially in Australia. Peruvian composer Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann also wrote Cinco Bagatelas Opacas y Traslucidas for violin and piano (also existing in a trio version with bass clarinet). In 2015 John Zorn composed a book of 300 Bagatelles for open instrumentation that were premiered that same year by Sylvie Courvoisier, Mark Feldman, John Medeski, Craig Taborn, Uri Caine, Jamie Saft, Marc Ribot, Gyan Riley, Julian Lage, Erik Friedlander, Peter Evans, Jon Irabagon, Jim Black and Ikue Mori

^ Oxford English Dictionary, 2001.
^ Kennedy, Michael, and Kennedy, Joyce, 2007, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Music, fifth edition
^ Brown, Maurice J. E., 2001, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, "Bagatelle"
^ Walton, William. 1974. Five Bagatelles for Guitar