Johann Joachim Quantz

Apprenticed to a town musician as a boy and competent on violin and oboe before the flute claimed him, Johann Joachim Quantz came out of Oberscheden near Göttingen and worked his way through Merseburg and Dresden into the Saxon court ensemble, with study travel in Italy, France and England along the way. From 1741 he served Frederick the Great in Berlin and Potsdam as court composer, flute teacher and instrument maker, supplying the king's daily music-making with a vast repertoire of concertos and sonatas. His Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen of 1752 covers ornamentation, tempo, accompaniment, taste and the responsibilities of the performer. He died in Potsdam in 1773. His first teachers were his uncle Justus Quantz and the organist Johann Friedrich Kiesewetter; he took counterpoint with Jan Dismas Zelenka in Vienna and flute lessons from Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin in Dresden, and the travelling years of 1724 to 1727 brought study with Francesco Gasparini in Rome, a meeting with Alessandro Scarlatti in Naples and an invitation from Handel to stay in London. As a maker he added a second key to the traverso for the sake of intonation, and Frederick kept eleven of his flutes. Little of the output reached print in his lifetime, and it runs to more than two hundred sonatas and some three hundred concertos.