a famous flautist

Some thoughts on

Friedrich der Große: Musiker und Monarch
Sabine Henze-Döhring
CH Beck 2012

Published in the year of Frederick the Great’s 300th birthday, this is a thorough appraisal of what we really know about the Prussian king’s music making. It turns out that all the anecdotes and the widely reproduced images such as the painting by Adolph Menzel appearing on the cover of the book and below, of the king playing a recital to an attentive audience, aren’t corroborated by any hard evidence.

Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci (painting by Adolph von Menzel, 1850–1852)
Source: Wikipedia

Typically, the author maintains, he will have played the flute in the company of his paid court musicians only, with no audience. Said musicians included his flute teacher, the composer Johann Joachim Quantz (at the right margin of the painting), as well as JS Bach’s son CPE Bach (at the harpsichord). Which is why Bach senior paid that very famous visit to Friedrich’s court. And given the circumstance that nobody could really go on record with judgements on the reigning monarch, we can’t really know how accomplished his playing was. So, it’s all a bit frustrating on the flute front.

What we know a lot more about, however, is his role as an impresario of professional and public concerts (in which he didn’t play), as well as court opera, where he championed the opera buffa as a new form imported from Italy, as well as star castrato singers also coming from there. The simple reason that we know a lot about these is that these musicians needed to be recruited and paid, which already involved correspondence and record keeping. And once they were doing their thing, Frederick liked to write letters about their music making to his relatives - and to Voltaire, obviously. As you do.

I also learned that, after he fought three wars against Austria over the possession of Silesia (which Prussia gained in the process), shared musical interests enabled he king to reconnect with Maria Theresia’s son, the future Austrian Emperor Joseph II. Music saves lives, again.

PS I missed the memo when this came out but discovered it on a recent visit to Potsdam where Old Fritz used to toot his flute.