Biography
Quantz was one of the first professional
flute players in 18th-century Europe. He
began as a town musician, trained to play
all instruments, but after gaining a post
as an oboist in the presitgious Dresden
court ensemble, he began to specialise in
the flute in 1719. he traveled to Italy,
France, and England to broaden his musical
education, then returned to Dresden. In
1741 he entered the service of Frederick
the Great of Prussia, where he remained
until his death, composing, performing,
and making flutes for the king. His Essay
on flute-playing (1752) made his famous
throughout Europe and attracted pupils who
formed a "school" of flute-playing
which remained influential for another hundred
years.
Works list
The Essay
Quantz's Essay of
1752 is less a tutor for the flute than
a compendium covering musical taste and
execution on all sorts of instruments. Because
of this broad scope it became and has remained
the most widely-known instrumental method
of the 18th century, except perhaps for
C.P.E. Bach's keyboard treatise. But compared
with the work of later writers such as Tromlitz,
its instructions on how to play the flute
itself are tantalisingly brief: only 50
pages of the original 334 are devoted to
flute-playing. But in contrast to other
superficial methods that promised effortless
and speedy mastery of an instrument, Quantz
designed his Essay 'to train a skilled and
intelligent musician, and not just a mechanical
flute-player'.
The tutor was written for the two-keyed
flute that Quantz favored and built, using
separate fingerings for sharps and flats,
but he gave only brief hints on how to use
these keys as he was well aware that most
of his readers used one-keyed flutes.
His instructions on tonguing were by far
the most sophisticated to date, including
the technique of double-tonguing, which
he was the first to mention in writing.
Musical compositions
Quantz wrote over 300 concertos and many
sonatas, most of which have never been published.
They are listed in two catalogs by Horst
Augsbach, Johann Joachim Quantz: Thematisches
Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke, Wekgruppen
QV 2 und QV3 (Dresden: Sächsische Landesbibliothek,
1984) and Johann Joachim Quantz: Thematisch-systematisches
Werkverzeichnis (QV) (Stuttgart: Carus-Verlag,
1997)
Flutes
|
|
Quantz began making flutes in 1739,
and built as many as eighteen instruments
for Frederick the Great during his
employment. Due to Frederick's habit
of giving these flutes away as a mark
of special favor, many of them survived
as heirlooms in Prussian noble families,
and are today preserved in museums
in Germany, the US, and Japan.
|
Quantz's flutes are unlike other baroque
flutes in a number of interesting ways.
In 1726 he invented a second key, for D#,
to the one for Eb already present on all
flutes. Making a distinction between these
and other enharmonic pairs was important
to Quantz's idea of playing in tune.
For more on intonation, see 
Tuning and Intonation
 |
Despite its excellence the Quantz
flute had a very limited influence
in 18th-century Europe. It was well
known in Berlin Enlightenment circles,
but as Quantz was not a commercial
instrument-maker few people had the
opportunity to own or even play one.
The tuning slide was taken up by a
few instrument-makers at the end of
the 18th century, but was not a generally
popular device. Serious flutists such
as Friedrich Ludwig Dülon (1769-1826)
and Johann George Tromlitz (1735-1805)
used flutes with both D# and Eb keys,
but again they were in a minority.
|
Ouantz's ideas about music remained influential
until the end of the 18th century due to
the wide distribution of his book. His name,
at least, was not forgotten in the 19th
century because of his association with
Frederick the Great of Prussia, considered
by many at that time as the founder of the
German state.
Extant Quantz flutes
|
|
| Serial no. |
Location |
| III |
D-Karlsruhe: private collection
|
| IV |
D-Leipzig: Musikinstrumenten
Museum
|
| XIII |
US-DC-Washington,
LOC: Miller 916
|
| XV |
J-Hamamatsu: City Museum
|
| XVII |
D-Berlin: Kunstgewerbe Museum
Hz 1289
|
| XVII |
D-Potsdam: Schloß Sanssouci
V18
|
| XVIII |
D-Berlin: Staatliches Institut
5076
|
| ? |
D-Hechingen: Burg Hohenzollern
|
|
Details in 
Eberhard Dehne-Niemann, 'The Quantz Flute',
TRAVERSO 9.4 (Oct 1997), 1-3
Another article, Mary Oleskiewicz, 'A Museum,
a World War, and a Rediscovery: Flutes by
Quantz and others from the Hohenzolern Museum'
(Journal of the American Musical Instrument
Society XXIV (1998), 107-45), has interesting
details about some of these instruments.
Portraits
|
|
| Medium |
Artist |
Location |
|
Oil on canvas
|
? May
|
lost
|
|
Oil on canvas
|
? Bea[bru]n
|
Schloss Fasanerie, Fulda
|
|
Oil on canvas
|
attrib. Friedrich Gerhard,
c1741
|
Schloss Ermitage, Bayreuth
|
|
Oil on canvas
|
? c1740?
|
London: Tony Bingham
|
|
Etching
|
Johann Gottlieb Glume, post
1741
|
Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett;
Dresden, Kupferstichkabinett,
and other collections
|
|
Pastels on vellum or parchment
|
Jean Chrétien de la
Fontaine, 1751
|
private collection, Washington
DC
|
|
Charcoal and ink on paper
|
Johann Heinrich Christoph Franke,
c1767
|
Berlin, Deutsche Staatsbibliothek,
Musikabteilung
|
|
Engraving
|
? Johann Friedrich Schleuen,
1767
|
numerous copies
|
|
Sources: Charles Walthall, 'Portraits of
Johann Joachim Quantz', Early Music
XIV (1986), 501-18
Tony Bingham's portrait is reproduced in
Early Music 23.1 (February 1995),
3.
Bibliography
Johann Joachim Quantz, trans. and ed. Edward
R. Reilly, On Playing
the Flute, 2nd edition, (Northeastern
University Press, 2001)
Mary Oleskiewicz, 'A Museum, a World War,
and a Rediscovery: Flutes by Quantz and
others from the Hohenzolern Museum' (Journal
of the American Musical Instrument Society
XXIV (1998), 107-45)
Charles Walthall, 'Portraits of Johann
Joachim Quantz', Early Music XIV
(1986), 501-18
Chapter 5, 'Quantz and the operatic style",
in Ardal Powell, The
Flute (Yale University Press, 2002)
Links to other Quantz
related pages
http://www.classical.net/~music/comp.lst/quantz.html
Vaucanson's
mechanical flute player
|
documents 
