Before Beethoven finally left Bonn for Vienna in November 1792, he had presented the Elector, Archduke Maximilian Franz, with his latest composition, a wind Octet. It was a particularly apt choice, as the Archduke enjoyed listening to wind-band Tafelmusik when he ate his supper, a habit which Mozart caricatured with such dramatic effect in the last act of Don Giovanni, where the Don, entertained by an on-stage wind-band, awaits the fateful arrival of the Commendatore's statue. Once settled in Vienna, Beethoven made an arrangement of the Octet for String Quintet and it was published in 1796 as op. 4. He also revised the original version for wind, but seems to have forgotten that he had done so, as it was found among his papers after he died and published posthumously as op. 103.

The history of the Octet perfectly illustrates Beethoven's ambivalent attitude to wind chamber music. He continued to compose delightful Tafelmusik from time to time in the early to mid 1790s, but he did not include such pièces d'occasion among his ‘more important works’, and usually put them aside, often for several years. When he was particularly short of funds, he would send them rather apologetically to publishers and, as a result, they tend to re-emerge with misleadingly mature opus numbers.

However, three compositions involving wind and strings were unquestionably as important as any of Beethoven's early chamber works: the Quintet for piano and wind, published simultaneously as the Quartet for piano and strings (both op. 16); the Trio for piano, clarinet (or violin) and cello, op. 11, and the ever popular Septet for clarinet, bassoon, horn, violin, viola, cello and bass, op. 20. The Serenade for flute, violin and viola, op. 25, is not in that class, but it is included in this chapter because it is unique and especially beguiling, and also because it is the only chamber work that Beethoven composed during his years in Vienna to include a flute, apart from an optional appearance in two sets of National Airs with Variations, op. 105 and op. 107. His other wind chamber music is discussed in Appendix 3.