The third movement incorporates a funeral march, clearly anticipating the watershed of the Eroica Symphony that Beethoven wrote in 1803–1804.

The third variation has been called a "pre-echo" of the funeral march movement by Andras Schiff during his lecture on the sonata.

In some editions there are no tempo markings, just "Marcia Funebre, sulla morte d'un Eroe" ("Funeral March, relating to the death of a hero") 14 years after finishing Op.26, in 1815,[4] Beethoven transcribed this movement for orchestra as part of a suite of incidental music to Johann Duncker's play Leonore Prohaska,[5] bearing the catalogue number WoO 96.

The four-bar phrases that open these pieces are almost identical in most musical aspects: key, harmony, voicing, register, and basic as well as harmonic rhythm.

Another less immediate connection exists with the main theme, also in A♭ major, of the Adagio movement in Schubert's piano sonata in C minor, D. 958.

[7] His first movement, however, is also animated and in sonata form, unlike Beethoven's Andante con variazioni.