The Viennese cellist Joseph Merk (born in 1795) is one of those musicians associated with important events of music history, eminent composers or their works without posterity having managed to remember. Merk’s etudes Op. 11 are dedicated “à son ami François Schubert” and are Martin Rummel’s sequence to his Naxos recording of Merk’s “Fleurs d’Italie”, about which David W. Moore wrote in the American Record Guide: “ … putting forth an unstated but tempting concept to present Rummel as the latest candidate for 'most distinguished Viennese cellist of today'. And perhaps he is."