Zur großen Wachparade

The March ZUR GROSSEN WACHPARADE (March for the Great Guard Parade) WoO 24 (WoO = Werk ohne Opus / work without opus) is a commissioned composition for the music banda of the Viennese civil artillery corps.
In an undated letter "from 1815 or 1816", Lieutenant Colonel Franz Xaver Embel ordered "a march for Turkish music".
The autograph score is dated "on June 5th, 1816".
We assume that Ludwig van Beethoven wrote exactly for the instrumentation of the Viennese banda:

- Flauto piccolo I
- Flauto piccolo II
- Oboe I
- Oboe II
- Clarinetto (F) I
- Clarinetto (D) II
- Clarinetto (D) III
- Clarinetto (D) IV
- Clarinetto (D) V
- Fagotto I
- Fagotto II
- Contrafagotto
- Corni (B basso) I
- Corni (B basso) II
- Corni (D) III
- Corni (D) IV
- Corni (D) V
- Corni (D) VI
- Tromba (D) I
- Tromba (D) II
- Tromba (D) III
- Tromba (D) IV
- Tromba (D) V
- Tromba (D) VI
- Tromba (B) VII
- Tromba (G) VIII
- Trombone Tenore
- Trombone Basso
- Serpente
- Triangolo
- Cinelli
- Tamburo piccolo
- Tamburo grande

The date of the first performance is not known.
On June 5, 1822, Beethoven offered the march to a music publisher under the title "No 4 Grosser Marsch zur Grossen Wachparade" (Great March for the Great Guard Parade).
The first edition of the score was published posthumously by Breitkopf & Härtel in 1864.
But already in April 1827, shortly after Beethoven's death, arrangements for pianos for two and four hands were published by Cappi & Czerný in Vienna.