Love and Alienation: On Beethoven’s Late Style and the 11 Bagatelles, op. 119

Beethoven’s late style is often associated with the great and large works such as the five piano sonatas, the string quartets, and the Missa Solemnis. However, among these great statues are small obscure gems, the bagatelles, op. 119 and op. 126.  Between these two, op. 119 strikes me as strange. Not only does this set contain the shortest bagatelles, it is reminiscent of Mozartian sweetness and lacks the sharp edges of other late works such as the Grosse Fuge as we see later. Moreover, in my first hearing of this opus, the bagatelles as a set felt incoherent. The bagatelles’ lack of a prescribed form makes it even harder for me to comprehend how the pieces cohere. These idiosyncrasies impel me to explore op. 119’s terrain. As I was delving into the bagatelles, a question sprang into mind: what is their place in the late style of Beethoven?

            When discussing the late style, Theodor Adorno argues that it is a “fractured landscape”[1] with conventions and forms that are “bald, undisguised, and untransformed.”[2] However, if the bagatelles lack a prescribed form, what conventions can we use to analyze lateness within these small works? They are so strange that Adorno relegates them as “[appearing] not as themselves but as signs of something else.”[3] The bagatelles become mere echoes of their larger siblings within the late style. In a similar manner, as Jeffrey Kallberg notes about Chopin’s Preludes, they seem to be sketches and beginnings of grander works like the Etudes. The preludes are “ruins”[4] of these large works. The bagatelles are likewise understood as “ruins” and “signs” of the larger late works. These 11 Bagatelles have not received the attention that its other bigger counterparts have received.

            The history of the bagatelles revolves around rejection (of sonata ideas) and salvage, that these bagatelles have been treated unfairly and in an alienated way. Upon closer inspection, however, these bagatelles have a larger significance within the late style than just being “ruins” or “signs” of larger works. In this paper, I argue that the 11 Bagatelles contain the “alienating” yet “loving” essence of Beethoven’s late style as understood by Daniel K.L. Chua.

            In exploring this argument, I first outline what a bagatelle might be in Beethoven’s terms. Next, I explain the publication history of the op. 119 to unravel the complications behind its intentional groupings, namely nos. 1-6 and nos. 7-11. I then examine a notion of alienation and love as understood by Friedrich Hegel and Chua. I illustrate how the formal law of freedom[5] can be used to understand how op. 119 represent both alienation and love. I finally explore how audiences exhibit alienation and love when listening to the bagatelles and their larger siblings like the Grosse Fuge.

A “Bagatelle!”

Joseph Kerman, in his “Dissociation and Integration” from The Beethoven Quartets, refers to the inner movements of the String Quartet no. 13, op. 130 as “bagatelles!”[6] These small movements between two other larger ones are defined precisely not by what it is, but by what it is not. There exists no formal definition nor characteristics that constitute a bagatelle. However, one can infer a general understanding of Beethoven’s bagatelles upon surveying op. 119, and also op. 33 and op. 126. All bagatelles in op. 33 comprise of two musical ideas affirming the tensions of tonality and rhythm as expected from early Beethoven. An example is op. 33, no. 3, “Allegretto.”
As presented above, the bagatelle comprises of two main ideas concerning rhythm: the first one contains a rhythm consistent with what is found in m. 1. The second one is a pulsating set of eighth-note rhythm. In op. 126, the same structure of having two musical ideas persist, as shown in no. 5:
In the first musical idea, the melody alternates between the treble and bass textures, while the second musical idea has arpeggiating chords against the main melody. In both Beethoven’s early and late period, his conception of a bagatelle is grounded on two musical ideas. Despite large differences between these styles, the conceived form of Beethoven’s bagatelles remains intact. In op. 119, the same structure persists.

In op. 119, no. 1 (from the first set, nos. 1-6), the first musical idea is comprised of descending quarter notes and eighth note figures in G minor. The second one is composed of quarter notes that seem to ascend and descending eighth notes in E-flat major. Another example is no. 8 (from the second set, nos. 7-11):

The first musical idea utilizes tendency tones to move upward. The inner and outer voices in this idea are not completely homorhythmic, creating an exchange between the melodic line. The second idea is almost completely homorhythmic, presenting a different texture from the first one. Among the 11 Bagatelles, however, there is an exception to this structure, namely no. 10, whose significance I discuss later. For now, I turn to the publication history of op. 119.

Two Sets: Opus 119 nos. 1-6 and nos. 7-11

According to Barry Cooper (in “Beethoven’s Portfolio of Bagatelles”) and Nicholas Marston (in “Trifles or a Multi-Trifle? Beethoven's Bagatelles, Op. 119, Nos 7-11”), op. 119 is separated into two groups of bagatelles: nos. 1-6 and nos. 7-11. Marston notes that Beethoven composed nos. 7-11 first. He sketched these bagatelles as a set right between when he composed the third movement of Piano Sonata, op. 109 and the “Benedictus” of the Missa Solemnis in the late 1820. This set was first published in Friedrich Starke's Wiener Piano-Forte-Schule in 1821.[7]

Per Cooper, the origins of nos. 1-6 can be traced when Beethoven offered Peters of Leipzig a set of small pieces in 1822.[8] The offer might have come during his late period, but the origins of these bagatelles stem as early as the late 18th century during Beethoven’s Middle Period. These bagatelles were not composed as a set but as amalgamations of Beethoven’s different ideas and sketches than span a wide timeframe. Cooper notes that these bagatelles, with the exception of no. 6, might have been composed before the late style period. No. 1, as Cooper suggests, can be traced back to ca. 1796-7 as a rejected middle movement for a piano sonata in op. 49.[9] No. 5 comes from the “Kessler” sketchbook from 1801-2, and no. 3 has traces from the “Wielhorsky” sketchbook from mid-1802.[10] No. 6 has its inceptions in the Missa sketchbook,[11] and Cooper argues that this bagatelle was composed as an effort to cohere and conclude a cycle of six pieces. Beethoven cannot find any prior sketches to wrap up the cycle that he was forced to write another Bagatelle.[12] As one would note, both no. 1 and 6 utilize a dotted eighth-note rhythm in their opening measures. Moreover, their themes have a brief upward trend, then it descends for a longer time (Figure 9). These similarities indicate that Beethoven may have intended nos. 1 and 6 as outer pieces of the set.

Eventually, Peters rejected the set of six bagatelles, as they were uncharacteristic of Beethoven.[13] To make use of the bagatelles, Beethoven sent nos. 1-6 to Ferdinand Ries in London, and he also enclosed nos. 7-11 since they were unpublished in England at that time. Clementi (London) bought both sets from Ries and published them together as op. 119.

If nos. 1-6 are mostly composed before the late style, should we even bother finding a place for them in this style? However, even if nos. 1-6 were composed before the late style, what did Beethoven, the composer of late works, see in these bagatelles and put them together as a set? Moreover, what significance does the grouping of these two sets bring to our understanding of the late style, despite their disparate composition history? Before answering these questions, I turn to a pivotal concept that weaves my argument together—that of alienation and love.

Alterity of the Spirit

Friedrich Hegel focuses a great deal on alienation in his Phenomenology of Spirit. He uses alienation in two different ways. To understand these uses, one must understand what Hegel calls the “social substance.”[14] To Hegel, the world that we live in, to a considerable extent, is a world that we create. It comprises of human-made institutions: family and community among others. These institutions constitute the social substance—a human product that has been sustained for centuries of human activity.[15] Since these institutions are the human spirit’s product, Hegel considers the social substance as spiritual. To Hegel, people are initially one with the social substance, but they lose their relation to it once they conceive self-awareness and individuality. This is the first use of Hegel’s alienation; which Richard Schacht notates as “alienation1” to avoid confusing it with the other use of alienation.[16] When a person recognizes their particularity, they experience alienation1 thus the emergence of the feeling of “Otherness.”[17]

In relation to music, alienation1 is expressed as the formal law of freedom. The formal law of freedom “is an autonomy of pure force, the unimpeded will of a legal subject whose sovereignty is maintained through what it excludes and what it binds in its process of self-formation.”[18] To have form, the subject must exert its freedom to exclude all foreign bodies that cannot be integrated into its structure. As Adorno notes, “without rejection there is no form.”[19] The purer the form, the more violent the exclusion of the Other is, and the stronger alienation1 becomes. Chua notes that among Beethoven’s works, the Fifth Symphony exhibits a “terrifying form” because of its tight “internal network.”[20] Beethoven exerts music’s formal law to exclude other musical material and develop a single motif. Because of this exclusion, the Fifth Symphony’s form is unambiguous. Like other works within the Middle Period, the Fifth exerts alienation1 and exhibits heroic individuality.

In his Aesthetics, Hegel argues that a “discursive reflection” between the subject and the object Other is necessary for the subject to understand itself,[21] and the first step for this reflection to begin is for the subject to recognize and inevitably alienate1 the Other. Hegel, however, stresses that this reflection must not end here. Even if he recognizes that a person is “essentially individual,” he places more importance on the universality of the social substance than on individual particularity.[22] Hegel emphasizes that the Other was not alien initially, as with the social substance, but it becomes the Other at the recognition of one self’s particularity. Therefore, the discursive reflection must aim to regain a connection to the social substance—to the Other. To achieve this, Hegel says that one must alienate themselves and abandon their willful self-assertion—their particular self—to be one with the universality of the social substance. This is another use of alienation that Schacht coins as “alienation2” to delineate it from “alienation1”.[23] In alienation2, one does not eliminate the Other, but they feel at home with it, removing the feeling of estrangement with the Other.[24] In other words, for music to alienate2 itself, it must abandon its formal law of freedom in order to embrace the Other.

Inasmuch as I agree with Hegel’s conception of alienation, his possible flaw lies in his ideation of the particular and the universal. When he talks about the particular, it seems that the willful individual creates a sense of an Other. This Other can only be understood if the willful individual subsumes this Other into their totalizing gaze.[25] To extend Hegel, it is the abandonment of this totalizing gaze that constitutes alienation2 in order to be one with the social substance. However, the problem is the universal social substance itself. The social substance is another form of totalizing gaze that subsumes particulars in an abstract totality, thus preventing a true alienation2. This is what I term Hegel’s alienation paradox.

This paradox can be illustrated using the third movement of op. 106 (Figure 11). This movement in F-sharp minor presents a “staring match”[26] between two entities in the primary theme: the lamenting melody in the home key and the otherworldly G major (Neapolitan). As the piece encounters the G-major Other, the F-sharp minor tries to alienate1 and exclude it in m. 16. However, when the G-major reappears in m. 22, the F-sharp minor does not try to alienate1 it again.

Instead, in an attempt to embrace the G major, the F-sharp minor subsumes the G major in its totality as a Neapolitan chord in m. 25. The Other is no longer its own entity, but it exists within the F-sharp minor. Therefore, the F-sharp minor does not abandon its totalizing gaze at all. It is still “standing firm,”[27] and it never alienated2 itself. How can one solve this paradox then? Emmanuel Levinas, through Chua, points to a possible answer to this conundrum.

Levinas conceptualizes an infinite Other that cannot be subsumed by any totalizing gaze. As Chua mentions, the totalizing gaze “blinds itself by the very light [the infinite Other] through which it claims to capture the world.”[28] The recognition of an infinite Other is a step to move away from

the totalizing gaze and towards alienation2. The key difference with Hegel is the direction of alienation. While Hegel’s alienation2 focuses on sacrificing self-assertion to move towards being one with the social substance, my understanding of alienation2 focuses on sacrificing self-assertion to allow others to move inwards oneself. It is our willingness to “become undone” that allows others in—this is love.[29]

Love and alienation have deep implications with music’s formal law of freedom. As discussed before, alienation1 is the expression of this formal law of freedom. Therefore, the abandonment of the formal law of freedom is to overcome alienation1 and move towards alienation2. To become undone and make room for others to enter is an expression of love. How then is alienation and love present in Beethoven’s 11 Bagatelles?

Alterity of the Bagatelles

In an initial encounter with op. 119, one may be perplexed with their designation as a late work amid the large opuses in this period. As Chua notes, “the ‘totalizing look’ of the hero is suddenly surprised by the alterity of a face that precedes his initiative and eludes his autonomy.” The bagatelles as a set, therefore, is now the Other within the late style. In comparison to larger works such as the Missa Solemnis and the piano sonatas, op. 119 is a stranger: it lacks a prescribed form. The Missa, even if it lacks a prescribed musical form, it has a prescribed (religious) text that can inform its structure. The piano sonatas and the string quartets have a prescribed form. Even if some of these structures are fragmented, as Adorno notes, we can still analyze and understand them in relation to conventions in form.[30] The bagatelles lack these conventions. One can only make up conventions based on a survey of Beethoven’s bagatelles as we did earlier. This survey is at risk of the totalizing gaze as well; however, the tonal tensions within the bagatelles tend to be persistent characteristic as we have seen. Moreover, there is a stigma around these bagatelles springing out from rejected piano sonata movements,[31] thus creating an image that they might be lesser works than their bigger siblings. Due to these dissonances between the larger works and the bagatelles, the late style tends to alienate these small gems, relegating them as mere ruins of larger works. This is alienation1 at work.

To overcome this alienation1, one must change one’s perspective when looking at the bagatelles. Instead of putting the burden of the bagatelles, one must look at the late style itself. In other words, instead of the subject—late style—totalizing the object Other—the bagatelles, the late style must abandon its totalizing gaze, face its own “redemption,”[32] and accept the bagatelles. The larger works are not without its formal fractures. Op. 110’s third movement with its recitative and fugue have an ambiguous form that the formal law of freedom might have problems exercising its outer freedom to exclude. Moreover, Op. 101’s third movement is at the crossroads of the formal law as well. It is a struggling piece of music that is desperate to form but fails a coherent and obvious structure. By embracing the fallibility of the larger works in terms of their formal law, the late style abandons its self-assertion of the formal law of freedom; thus, it overcomes alienation1 and moves towards alienation2. By allowing itself to be full of flaws and lacking an utter self-assertion, the late style alienates2 itself to let others in, namely the bagatelles. Thus, we must reconsider Adorno’s understanding of the late style as a fragmented reality that demythologizes as a fragmented reality—full of flaw—that finds fulfilment through the loving acceptance of the Other.

Another aspect that makes op. 119 an interesting case is that within it, alienation also operates. There are two notable ways that this occurs. The first is as follows. If the bagatelles are understood as a construction of two ideas, there is one exception: Op. 119, no. 10.

No. 10 is a peculiar case as it does not constitute two musical ideas but just one. The striking feature is the fast and staccato nature of this piece. The rhythmic pattern does not change, and the modality remains constant. In a burst, the listener can only hear one idea in this bagatelle. One listener might even note how “silly” this sounds. The bagatelles themselves alienate1 no. 10 by singling it out due to its “conciseness,” but the fact that it is within the set shows how Beethoven alienated2 his possible conception of a bagatelle to make space for no. 10. I like to see it as Beethoven giving love even to the short and silly child called no. 10.

            The second way that op. 119 exhibits alienation is through the juxtaposition of nos. 1-6 and nos. 7-11. Most of nos. 1-6 are composed before the late period, and they sprang out from rejected piano sonata movements. In contrast, nos. 7-11 were composed as an intended set. One can interpret that nos. 7-11 imposes its totality to the other set; however, nos. 7-11 embraces nos. 1-6 and sacrifices its self-assertion to coherence. This sacrifice allows nos. 1-6 to enter it; therefore, they both produce op. 119. This set is a result of love and invitation. The 11 Bagatelles embody Beethoven’s Other Humanism not only from within each bagatelle but also outside in relation to the larger late style and works.

The Sweetness

An engaged listener of late Beethoven would observe the sweetness of the “Bagatelles” of String Quartet no. 13, op. 130. One can only taste the sweet flesh of these smaller movements when they pry open the thick and edgy outer movements of this String Quartet. In a similar manner, one can appreciate more the sweetness of the 11 Bagatelles when they examine, and pry open the “strange fruit”[33] that is the other later works. What does this have to do with alienation? This form of alienation now pertains to the audience and not the work itself. As Chua notes, “the subject’s ability to avert this gaze, or perhaps to stare through it, [is what] constitutes the inhumanity of modern society.”[34] An avid listener of late Beethoven would know that it is difficult to comprehend music from this period. The Grosse Fuge is just one example of this.

From Figure 13, one can see the frenzy within this fugue. One can just take a glance at the score to note the persistent three-against-two rhythm and the incessant notation of fortes and sforzandos. This is not a type of music that is meant neither to please nor to be beautiful. I think it is meant to provoke and impel its listeners to grapple with its thorny edges, no matter how the listener wants to internalize that painful reality as it fits their experiences. Listening to Beethoven is not always a sweet experience.

There are audiences who alienate1 this “Other” music and avoid it completely. However, they must alienate2 this estranged feeling and learn to be comfortable with the presence of the Other. When the audience learns to alienate2, then one can see the sweetness of the bagatelles even more. An example of this is the op. 119, no. 3:

A listener of late Beethoven would be surprised at the presence of a sweet high melody and perfect proportions as a 4+4 phrase. This bagatelle’s opening idea is utterly diatonic and enjoyable to listen to. These minute details are the staple of the Classical Era, and the bagatelles’ sweetness would not be as delicate when set side-by-side with Mozartian works. However, the sweet flesh of this strange fruit may become even more indulgent after cutting through its thorny edges.

Beethoven impels his listeners to raise their “competencies and expectations” and come to grips with “’incomprehensible’ works or passages of later years” like the Grosse Fuge.[35] Before, it was the composer’s responsibility to pry the fruit open, but late Beethoven puts this burden on his listeners. Beethoven, to some extent, demands his listeners to interpret the late works. As Mark Evan Bonds points out, late Beethoven “was himself oscillating…between two compositional approaches, one rhetorical, the other…open to—indeed, demanding—interpretation.”[36] In the same manner, Beethoven provokes his audience to “listen [to the late works] in a way that encourages a perpetual oscillation between opposites:”[37] ugly and beautiful, comprehensible and incomprehensible. In other words, the listener must embrace both the sweet bagatelles and the thorny edges of the larger late works. To achieve this, they must alienate2 themselves and overcome the “incomprehensibility”[38] of works such as the Grosse Fuge. In other words, they must abandon “presumptions of clarity and intelligibility”[39] when listening to Beethoven. Alienation2 allows the audience to open up themselves and receive the gift of the Other’s gaze just as we receive the sweetness of the late style through the bagatelles only when we open up ourselves to its thorny edges.

Conclusion

We started our discourse with a question, and we end it with an invitation. We asked: what place do the bagatelles have in the late style? We explored this question by examining how alienation and love (as understood by Hegel and Chua) plays a role in the formal law of freedom within the bagatelles and the late style. The late style undoes itself to invite the bagatelles to come the same way as the other ten bagatelles undo themselves to make loving space for no. 10, and how nos. 7-11 are willing to sacrifice their coherent form to embrace nos. 1-6. This alienation not only applies to the music but to the audience themselves. To taste the sweetness of the bagatelles, they must learn to be comfortable with the presence of the Other by alienating their estranged feelings towards it.

            Beethoven’s late style is not just about the large works. It is most especially about the small ones. In this sense, the 11 Bagatelles, op. 119 are more than just small works. They represent the alienation and love that Beethoven himself might have experienced. These small gems are his gifts to us, his listeners and posterity of musicians, hoping that we may continue to be human and to include and love Others.

[1] Theodor Adorno, “Late Style in Beethoven,” in Essays on Music, trans. Richard Leppert (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 564–67, 567.

[2] Ibid., 565.

[3] Theodor Adorno, Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 158.

[4] Jeffrey Kallberg, “Small ‘Forms’: In Defence of the Prelude,” in The Cambridge Companion to Chopin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 124–44, https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521404907.008, 133.

[5] See Daniel K. L. Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 62, no. 3 (December 1, 2009): 571–645, https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2009.62.3.571, 577.

[6] Joseph Kerman, The Beethoven Quartets, Later prt. edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1979), 313.

[7] Nicholas Marston, “Trifles or a Multi-Trifle? Beethoven’s Bagatelles, Op. 119, Nos 7-11,” Music Analysis 5, no. 2/3 (1986): 193–206, https://doi.org/10.2307/854185, 195.

[8] Barry Cooper, “Beethoven’s Portfolio of Bagatelles,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 112, no. 2 (1986): 208–28, https://www.jstor.org/stable/797939, 208.

[9] Ibid., 212.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid., 213.

[12] Ibid., 220.

[13] Could it possibly be because they were uncharacteristic of the “late style”?

[14] Richard Schacht, Alienation (New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1970), 31.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Ibid., 35.

[17] Ibid., 40.

[18] Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” 580.

[19] Theodor Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. Robert Hullot-Kentor, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 162.

[20] Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” 581.

[21] G. W. F. Hegel, Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, Vol. I, trans. T. M. Knox, Reprint edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 49

[22] Schacht, “Alienation,” 33.

[23] Ibid., 46.

[24] Ibid., 56.

[25] Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” 583.

[26] Ibid., 598.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid., 582.

[29] Ibid., 619.

[30] Adorno, “Late Style in Beethoven,” 565.

[31] Cooper, “Beethoven’s Portfolio of Bagatelles,” 212.

[32] Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” 637.

[33] Adorno, “Late Style in Beethoven,” 564.

[34] Chua, “Beethoven’s Other Humanism,” 589.

[35] Mark Evan Bonds, “Irony and Incomprehensibility: Beethoven’s ‘Serioso’ String Quartet in F Minor, Op. 95, and the Path to the Late Style,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 70, no. 2 (August 1, 2017): 285–356, https://doi.org/10.1525/jams.2017.70.2.285, 338

[36] Ibid., 336

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid., 328

[39] Ibid.