The autograph of Beethoven's concerto bears the amusing inscription ‘Concerto par Clemenza pour Clement, primo Violino e Direttore al theatro a Vienne, dal L.v.Bthvn. 1806’, Tovey calling this ‘a virile pun on his “clemency” towards the poor composer’. However, the work was dedicated not to Clement but to Beethoven's childhood friend Stephan von Breuning and was first published in Vienna. The year of publication is normally given as 1808, but evidence suggests that it was certainly available by August 1807. It appeared at about the same time as its adaptation for piano, which, dedicated to von Breuning's wife, Julie, was announced along with the Fourth Piano Concerto in the Wiener Zeitung of 10 August 1808.

Sketches

Beethoven is known to have recorded his ideas as soon as possible in sketchbooks, which appear gradually to have become indispensable to his creative process, especially the planning and re-planning of structural procedures and the progressive refinement of thematic material. They were very personal documents that remained with Beethoven throughout his life, in excess of fifty being included in the auction of his Nachlass.

Beethoven's method of working on several compositions concurrently resulted in those few sketches that have survived for his Violin Concerto being intermingled with those for his Fifth Symphony and the Cello Sonata Op. 69. It is difficult to believe that no other sketches were made for such a complex work and it seems more likely that a single book of sketches has been lost than that several loose leaves have gone astray.