Among Vienna’s many composers and pianists of the time, Anton Eberl (1765–1807) was the one considered most worthy of comparison with Beethoven. His Sonata in D minor, the fifth of seven sonatas, Op. 14, for violin and piano, was composed around 1800–01, at the time when Beethoven wrote his violin sonatas Op. 23 in A minor and Op. 24 in F major (‘Spring’). In its duration, formal and harmonic novelty, and lively relationship between the instruments, the piece reveals much of the musical ambition and quality typical of Beethoven’s works rather than those in the genre by Eberl’s lesser contemporaries. The Op. 14 sonatas (and the three Op. 13 quartets) were first published in Vienna in autumn 1801 by Tranquillo Mollo (the publisher of Beethoven’s Opp. 23 and 24 and string quartets Op.18, nos. 4–6).