Originally written in 1979 but extensively revised in 2004, these bagatelles were included on the Delphian label CD of Boyle’s music for clarinet performed by Fraser Langton and James Willshire. In the first bagatelle syncopations and metrical shifts give a ragtime feel to the score whilst the second centres around a repeated D. Energy and poetic reflection coexist in the third before it slips into a trance-like reverie, and the brief span of the final bagatelle suggests a circus populated by malevolent clowns.