Andrew List, composer: Six Bagatelles for String Trio was written for and premiered by the Concordia String Trio. These pieces are inspired by the spirit of Beethoven’s Bagatelles for piano and Webern’s Six Bagatelles for String Quartet, two works that influenced me deeply as a young composer.
Each bagatelle or miniature serves to develop different rhythmic, textural and timbral possibilities of the ensemble. The different moods of each piece contrast greatly from very driving and aggressive style, to linear contrapuntal strands followed by a more lyrical and introverted music, to extremely ethereal and otherworldly. It was my goal in writing this piece to create large contrasts in the sound, mood and surface texture of each movement while maintaining a consistent motivic and harmonic language, which serves to connect the whole work together.
