Though royalty and the aristocracy played important parts as patrons of the arts in eighteenth-century Europe, few were as directly involved as Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, who was not only a patron of music and musicians, but also an accomplished performer and composer in his own right.
King Frederick's compositions (almost all for flute) are far from being the works of a dilettante. Predictably, they are modeled on Quantz's compositions, but possess an individuality and gentle charm at odds with the conventional image of a Prussian monarch.
