| Beethoven's last work for his own instrument, the
piano, is a set of six bagatelles. They
do not make the virtuosic demands of most of the other piano work of Beethoven's late period, standing instead as a minor work
for the amateur. They are not, however, without musical interest: the third, particularly, is a more substantial work than many
of Beethoven's sonata movements (one critic has said that the harmonically still second
section gives one the impression that Beethoven is trying to exorcise the famous Ode to Joy theme); and the figurations in the slow fourth piece are reminiscent of the slow movement of the
Hammerklavier sonata.
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