A few of Beethoven's earliest compositions were published in Bonn in the 1780s and early 1790s, but when he finally moved to Vienna in November 1792, he decided to delay any further publications until he was satisfied that he could make the greatest possible impact in a variety of genres and styles. Though already celebrated as a virtuoso pianist and master of improvisation, he held back as a composer, spending his first three years there revising the best of his earlier compositions, writing new ones and learning what he could from Haydn and others. In 1794, he was particularly cross with his Bonn friend, the horn player Nikolaus Simrock, for publishing an unrevised version of his Eight Variations for Piano (four hands) on a Theme by Count Waldstein, WoO 67: ‘The fact is that I had no desire to publish at the present moment any variations, because I wanted to wait until some more important works of mine, which are due to appear very soon, had been given to the world.’

The musical community in Vienna was much larger than the one Beethoven left behind in Bonn, although several private orchestras had been disbanded in the years following the French Revolution and, at least compared to London, there were surprisingly few public concerts. As a result, opportunities for the promotion of orchestral music were limited while, by contrast, the demand for piano music and chamber music was voracious. Much of the music published at the time was aimed at a modest domestic market – what George Eliot would later describe succinctly as ‘airs with variations, a small kind of tinkling, which symbolized the aesthetic part of a young lady's education’. But Beethoven showed little interest in providing such easy fare, reflecting the elevated view of his Bonn teacher Christian Gottlob Neefe that musical forms are closely related to the spiritual life of mankind; so he aimed his ‘more important works’, as Mozart had done in his later chamber music, at an altogether more cultured and musically literate audience.