Bagatelle

Dear friends of piano music,

to be completely misunderstood by his contemporaries is not only the fate of the ingeniously gifted, but also, for example, of one of my neighbors, who always adorns the magnificent garden of the even more magnificent villa, whose ground floor he lives in, always quite unusual. To the delight of the children, but causing astonishment or even anger in some adult viewers, he has not only recently developed a predilection for pink plush toys, but has also remarkably combined a Buddha statue on the edge of his small garden pond with a water pipe. One feels, even if very distantly, reminded of the famous Brussels fountain figure of "Manneken Pis". Since I am concerned with the term "bagatelle" because of my currently working on Beethoven, I asked my husband whether this activity of both characters would be legally "bagatelle injuries". In the general usage of the German language this is the most frequent use of the word “Bagatelle”, otherwise it is still used as a synonym for “Petitesse” or “Nulligkeit” or the like. Something that, due to its insignificance and smallness, deserves no further attention or occupation. The "Manneken-Pis" activity, however, is, in contrast to my assumption, not a "bagatelle offense", but quite simply damage to property, possibly in the act of "causing a public nuisance." but offenses designated as such are in reality always something else, such as damage to property, embezzlement or coercion. What connects these facts is their insignificance, which means that they are usually no longer prosecuted and punished.

Now Beethoven's “bagatelles” are really no “trifles”, even if they may be relatively short. The publisher Peters rejected them as “too small” during the composer's lifetime. In the vicinity of personalities of timeless importance, one always has the great opportunity to go into history with misjudgments and a lack of insight. Personally, however, and you must not take this as a posthumous criticism, Mr Beethoven, I would find the term "aphorisms" more appropriate, because here you expect what you actually get: a meaningful thought in condensed form.

Very soon I will publish another “Bagatelle”, by my new favorite composer Ali Afifi, a great piece that I am currently working on very intensively and which completely wrongly bears this misleading title. But nothing is further from me than to criticize Messrs Beethoven and Afifi, the name has its own tradition and I am happy about their rich musical output - names are smoke and mirrors ...

 Greetings from Heidelberg

Kerstin