This set of three pieces was assembled in 2020 for the call for scores “Bagatelles for Beethoven” by the organization Kaleidoscope MusArt. Independently composed, one as far back as 1975 and the other two in 2019 and 2020, they all have one thing in common: the music of Beethoven.

The first of them, quarantasette estratti da un vicolo ludofilo was written in 2019 in response to an invitation by the German pianist Susanne Kessel, starting in 2013, extended to 250 composers of contemporary music including myself to each write a new piano piece to celebrate Beethoven’s 250th birth anniversary in 2020. The premieres of the pieces have been taking place since 2013 and somewhat disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic. 

I wrote the second bagatelle, Klavierstück Für Luise, in 1975 for a long tape-piece, broadcast the following year on German Radio. As the title may suggest, it is derived from Beethoven’s bagatelle Klavierstück Für Elise, by humoristically twisting the harmonic modulations of the original piece.

Ideas for the third bagatelle, Fantasy Prelude Miscibly Interfused, had been in my mind for several years before I finally committed them to paper in January and February 2020 for the Kaleidoscope MusArt call for scores 2020. The pitches of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” are set to the rhythms of J. S. Bach’s Prelude No.1 of the Well-Tempered Clavier Book 1. In a simultaneous counterpoint the pitchs of Bach’s Prelude are set to the rhythms of Beethoven’s sonata.