who, however, did not publish them. The fourth March was the Military March in D major composed in 1816.[104] It was first published in 1827, after Beethoven’s death, in an arrangement for pianoforte, by Cappi and Czerny; a four-hand arrangement followed soon after and it was given to the world in its original shape in the Complete Edition. It was composed at the personal request of F. X. Embel, “Magisterial Councillor and Lieut.-Colonel of the Civil Artillery,” who probably preferred his request in 1815, a sketch for it appearing in a book used in 1815-1816.--The data concerning these old works are given here because Beethoven brought them out of his portfolio and offered them to the publishers in this year. The Bagatelles, Op. 126, belong to this period, though their completion fell later. Taking up earlier sketches probably, Beethoven worked on them after the Ninth Symphony was practically complete in his mind and the sketchbooks--at the close of 1823 at the earliest. It is likely that they were not finished until the middle of 1824. Nottebohm had subjected them to a minute study which leads him to the conclusion that the pieces were conceived as a homogeneous series, the numbers being linked together by key-relationship. On the margin of a sketch for the first one Beethoven wrote “Cycle of Trifles” (“Kleinigkeiten”), which fact, their separation from each other (all but the first two) by the uniform distance of a major third, taken in connection with their unity of style, establishes a cyclical bond. When he offered them to Schott in 1824 he remarked that they were probably the best things of the kind which he had ever written. They were among the compositions which had been pledged to his brother, in whose interest he offered them to Schott. They were published by that firm, probably in the early part of 1825. In 1828 Diabelli and Co. published a “Rondo a Capriccio” in G which had been purchased at the auction sale of Beethoven’s effects after his death. It bore on its title-page the inscription: “Die Wuth über den Verlornen Groschen, ausgetobt in einer Caprice” (“Rage at the loss of a groat stormed out in a Caprice”). Nothing is known of its origin. In the catalogue of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Czerny noted it as belonging to Beethoven’s youthful period; which may be true of its theme, but can not be of its treatment. Among the sketches and drafts for the Bagatelles is a sketch for an arch and mischievous piece evidently intended for strings,[105] and a two-part canon on the words “Te solo adoro” from Metastasio’s “Betulia liberata,” which, as transcribed by Nottebohm, has been printed in the Complete Edition. FOOTNOTES: [68] In a Conversation Book of 1820 we read this remark by Beethoven: “What I think of confession may be deduced from the fact that I myself led Karl to the Abbot of St. Michael for confession. But the abbot declared that as long as he had to visit his mother, confession would be of no avail.”