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Frederick II

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786), known to history as Frederick the Great, was among the most musically gifted rulers in European history, a skilled flautist who composed more than a hundred flute sonatas and several concertos and gave regular chamber concerts at his court in Potsdam. He studied with Johann Joachim Quantz, who spent decades as his court flautist composing works specifically for the royal player. In 1747 Johann Sebastian Bach visited the Prussian court; Frederick gave him a long chromatic theme and challenged him to improvise a fugue on it, and Bach subsequently used that theme as the basis of The Musical Offering, one of the summits of Baroque counterpoint.

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