The Australian National AIDS Trust asked me to play the piano at their annual fund-raising dinner in 1994. I hadn't performed professionally for some time, and couldn't think of a suitable work that I could actually handle in public. As a result I wrote "Threnody" (for all of the innocent victims) - simple enough for me to play, and specifically dedicated to the cause. This emerged as a surprisingly effective work, but there was no context in which it could reasonably be published. I decided to create a set of five small works, mainly to provide such a context, but also to explore some 'smaller' keyboard ideas than a large sonata structure permits. "Threnody" became the fifth bagatelle, its companions designed to be as diverse as possible.