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The flute starts to become popular as a solo instrument and to acquire its own repertoire with Michel de Labarre's Pieces pour la flûte traversière avec la basse-continue (1702). A booming market for instruments and music provides opportunities for makers, composers, teachers, and publishers in England, France, Holland, and Germany.   Quantz's Essay of a Method of Playing the Flute traversiere, a massive treatise on performance practice, is published in German and French in 1752.   The blind child prodigy Friedrich Ludwig Dülon begins a famous career as a touring virtuoso (1779).  
Professional flutists nearly all play oboe as their first instrument. In England they appear before a paying audience in public concerts, alongside players of the violin, oboe, recorder, and keyboard. Their repertoire includes new forms such as solos (sonatas or suites for flute and basso continuo) and concertos. Concerts in France and Germany are still mostly private affairs.   The printing of opera arrangements and other music in easy keys for amateurs increases. Meanwhile Dresden flute virtuosi write challenging music in a range of difficult keys. Flutes become a more regular feature of opera scores, and the Italian operatic style dominates flute music. Larger-scale instrumental music such as the symphony becomes fashionable in the mid-18th century. Instrumentalists develop distinctive styles of playing, and groups of music-lovers in various cities provide opportunities for flute soloists to make concert tours.   François Devienne and Antoine Hugot are among 5 professors of flute at the new Paris Conservatoire.
  Solo concertos and chamber works by classical composers including Mozart, J.C. Bach, F. A. Hoffmeister feature the flute. Most professional flutists write their own concertos.
  Jacques Martin Hotteterre, the author of the first method book for the baroque flute, Principes de la flûte traversière (1707)
Hotteterre page 		Michlel Blavet begins a brilliant career as a soloist in Paris (1726).         Leipzig virtuoso Johann George Tromlitz, a soloist famous for his powerful tone and perfect intonation, publishes a massive flute tutor (1791).
Tromlitz page 		 
  German musicians discover the transverse flute in the 17-teens. Composers including G.P. Telemann and J.S. Bach contribute works in a distinctive style to the growing repertoire for the flute.   Frederick the Great becomes King of Prussia in 1740, appointing C. P. E. Bach as his keyboard player and enticing his flute teacher Quantz to leave Dresden and become Music Director in Berlin.
Quantz page 		  Fife and drum bands are now 'traditional' in German and English military music. They appear in the American Colonies during the Seven Years' (French and Indian) War. Military woodwind ensembles and orchestras begin featuring flutes more frequently, though not regularly.  
 
Baroque flute page

Flutes made in four sections instead of the usual three begin to be made, dividing the body between the two hands. Extensions from D to low C also enjoy a brief vogue.

J.J. Quantz begins building a series of instruments for himself and Frederick the Great to his own special design, adding a second key to make enharmonic distinctions more accurately.
Tuning and intonation page

London woodwind maker John Just Schuchart begins building flutes with additional keys for Bb, G#, F, and an extension from D to low C.
Flute making technology article
Classical flute page
German flute makers are by now building keyed fltes as well as the one-keye type, usually to low D only. In 1785 Tromlitz invents an instrument with 7 keys. In 1800 he publishes a tutor for an 8-keyed Tromlitz flute.