bagatelle

If anything, the slowly accumulating final chord of the bagatelle could have set up the softly arpeggiated one at the start of “Twilight Way,” the first of the “Poetic Tone Pictures.”

While practicing here, he has been playing pieces by Ukrainian composers, including bagatelles by Silvestrov, to remind him of home.

The multimillionaire said that $100,000 “was a bagatelle to me” and that the loan was simply “a personal transaction based on old-time friendship.”

“Ma Belle, My Beauty” may be a mere bagatelle, but it’s a diverting and attractive one.

A bagatelle the length of a pop song, Beethoven’s trifle is recognizable from the start: a wobble between E and D sharp that gives way to a tune you’ve heard virtually everywhere.