Johann Joachim Quantz (1697–1773) was one of the very first musicians to combine in one career musical instrument making, composition, reflections on musical aesthetics, and pedagogy, as well as advice on musical interpretation. His career thus stands as a prototype for the kind of comprehensive endeavour that is carried out today by the Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (SIMPK; State Institute for Music Research, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation). The Musical Instrument Museum, as part of the SIMPK, took the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Quantz's death in 2023 as an opportunity to organize a special exhibition and a research symposium on his life and work as well as his influence on the development of the transverse flute, flute music and flute pedagogy to the present day. The symposium (Music in Transition: The Work and Impact of Johann Joachim Quantz) took up the core themes of the exhibition: instrument making, composition, pedagogy and aesthetics. It was held on 1 and 2 December 2023 in the Curt-Sachs-Saal of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum and was rounded off with a concert on 3 December.
After welcoming speeches by the Institute's director, Rebecca Wolf, and me as conference organizer (Christian Breternitz, Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin), the symposium opened with the first keynote address from Walter Kreyszig (University of Saskatchewan) on the applicatio diminutiorum in Quantz, both in theory and in practice. Kreyszig focused on Quantz's multifaceted preoccupation with questions of performance and compositional practice, as well as organology and pedagogy. He devoted himself to these areas in detail in his 1752 Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (On Playing the Flute), but these concerns are also addressed in his autobiography published in 1754–1755 by Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (Historisch-kritische Beyträge zur Aufnahme der Musik, volume 1 (Berlin: Joh. Jacob Schützens sel. Wittwe), 197–250). In addition to the theorica musicae, practica musicae and disciplina musicae, the applicatio diminutiorum is a central concern. Kreyszig demonstrated this using the Adagio in C major qv1:7 and the 28 Variations on ‘Ich schlief, da träumte mir’, qv1:98, as examples. He also discussed Quantz's significance from his death to the present day.
This formed the prelude to the following three lectures, which approached Quantz primarily from the perspective of the professional transverse flautist. Susanne Schrage (independent scholar, Aachen) – who has recently published her dissertation, Komposition und Vortrag: Die Berliner Flötensonaten von Johann Joachim Quantz (Composition and Performance: The Berlin Flute Sonatas of Johann Joachim Quantz (Würzburg: Könighausen & Neumann, 2024)) – spoke about Quantz's tempo categories from the perspective of these same sonatas. While the modern metronome is an invention of the early nineteenth century, Quantz used the player's pulse (heartbeat) as a reference measure for his tempo indications. Peter Thalheimer (Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg), one of the most distinguished transverse-flute players, drew on all his experience in historical performance practice, organology and musicology in his paper on Quantz's playing instructions ‘Hauchen’ (a gentle exhalation) and ‘mit der Brust gestoßen’ (an abrupt exhalation). He explained the development of these articulation techniques from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, which are associated with the vocal trillo and the instrumental tremolo. He drew on theoretical literature and demonstrated the sound effects on instruments from his own collection. Eckart Haupt (Hochschule für Musik Carl Maria von Weber, Dresden), long-time principal flautist of the Dresden Staatskapelle, focused on Quantz's time at that city's court. Stepping in at short notice for a speaker who was unable to attend, he described his experiences exploring some of the composer's unknown works.
Klaus Aringer, from the Kunstuniversität Graz, delved into the life of Quantz, focusing on the autobiographical documents. Under the title ‘Ein schönes und nicht verflachendes Talent’ (a beautiful and enduring talent), he addressed aspects of Quantz's life in relation to the Enlightenment by tracing the connections, correspondences and contradictions between his ideal of a ‘rechtschaffenen Musiker’ (righteous musician) and the facts of his own career. Aringer laid a good foundation for the art historian and cultural theorist Saskia Hüneke (Potsdam). In her impressive and lively paper, she considered Quantz from a cultural-historical perspective – a perspective that is, unfortunately, all too seldom found in musicological studies. By comparing portraits and funerary sculptures of Quantz and his contemporaries, she drew conclusions about Quantz's social status and self-image, placing them in the context of courtly service and the Berlin Enlightenment.
Anyone studying Quantz and Frederick II cannot avoid the famous painting created by Adolph Menzel in 1852, Flötenkonzert Friedrichs des Großen in Sanssouci (Frederick the Great Playing the Flute at Sanssouci), if only because both figures can be seen in the painting. The art historian and recognized Menzel expert Anna Pfäfflin (Kupferstichkabinett der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin) explored questions of whether music and sound can be depicted in a painting and what had interested Adolph Menzel about the flute-concert scene one hundred years after the actual event. In a vivid lecture, she explained the history of the painting's creation based on the preliminary studies for it, various representations of hearing in art and Menzel's use of colours to depict music in comparison with other masters.
The renowned Quantz expert Mary Oleskiewicz (University of Massachusetts Boston) opened the second day with the keynote address ‘Quantz, der Meisterkomponist: Fragen der Zuschreibung, Chronologie und stilistischen Entwicklung seiner Flötenwerke’ (Quantz, the Master Composer, and Questions of the Attribution, Chronology and Stylistic Development of His Flute Works). She selected some of the around five hundred compositions to illustrate the stylistic development of the composer. In doing so, she first showed their relationship to the works of Vivaldi, Corelli, Handel and Telemann, before turning to the galant style. Oleskiewicz gave an equally impressive description of the influence of Quantz's innovative flutes on his stylistic development.
The long-standing director of the Berlin Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Conny Restle, considered the pairing of the fortepiano and the transverse flute as a tonal unit in the eighteenth century. She emphasized the innovative character of Quantz, who greatly appreciated the fortepiano – then a comparatively new instrument. As was vividly demonstrated with the help of numerous audio and visual materials, the harmony of the transverse flute and fortepiano corresponded to the new, intimate style of sound that Quantz had perfected since taking up his post in Potsdam.
My paper (Christian Breternitz) examined the general development of woodwind-instrument making in Berlin and Potsdam over the course of the eighteenth century. I explained the general economic situation of the time and then discussed the lives of several instrument makers based in Berlin and Potsdam, such as Johann Heytz (1672–1737), Christoph Freyer (1708–1767/1772) and Friedrich Gabriel August Kirst (1750–1806). Unfortunately, the question of whether Quantz might have worked with one of these masters remains unanswered. Björn Kempf (Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin) focused on the technical innovations in flute making by Quantz and Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin (1693–1768). His talk was based on the Quantz flute held at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum (catalogue no. 5076) and on the transverse flute stamped ‘Buffardin le fils’, which was discovered a few years ago and can be attributed to Pierre-Gabriel Buffardin. The instrument is now also part of the collection of the Musikinstrumenten-Museum (catalogue no. 6234). Kempf considered the qualities and innovative characteristics of the two flutes in detail and suggested ways in which they influenced later instrument makers.
Erich Tremmel (Universität Augsburg), on the other hand, examined Quantz as a musical generalist. Using his autobiography and the information given in the Versuch as starting-points, Tremmel explored Quantz's broad horizons; he was not only a flautist, but distinguished himself in almost all relevant musical activities, from being a Kapellmeister to performing as a Ripienist. Tremmel pointed out that this background knowledge is necessary for a deeper understanding of Quantz, and he emphasized the importance of the Versuch for all musicians and musicologists concerned with the music of the eighteenth century.
The first of two lectures on acoustics was given by Gunter Ziegenhals (Westsächsische Hochschule Zwickau). He presented the results of a study carried out by the Institut für Musikinstrumentenbau on behalf of the Händel-Haus Halle. This involved determining the tuning of a number of woodwind instruments without playing them. The instruments included six transverse flutes, four of which were made during Quantz's lifetime and two shortly after his death. Ziegenhals gave detailed insight into the measuring methods and results. Christoph Reuter (Universität Wien) focused on the acoustic differences and similarities between the baroque transverse flute and the modern flute. He detailed a study in which a flautist recorded all possible pitches on both modern and baroque instruments at a mf dynamic level and then compared them with reference to 134 sound characteristics using signal-analysis techniques. In addition, the locations of the first ten partials for all pitches on both instruments were recorded with an acoustic camera. With many illustrations and sound demonstrations, Reuter succeeded in making a particularly complex subject accessible to non-acousticians.
Jörg Fiedler (independent scholar, Basel) analysed Quantz's intonation model based on the D sharp / E flat key, perhaps Quantz's most famous invention. In a compelling lecture, he approached this model with reference to ideas that had already existed in ancient Greece. While Quantz and other eighteenth-century writers usually presented this system of ideas in fragments, Georg Philipp Telemann combined the unrelated elements into a closed and coherent system in 1752. Fiedler cleared up the misunderstandings that lie behind this intonation matrix and demonstrated the musical results of Telemann's thinking. Flautist and patent attorney Stefanie Pritzlaff (Munich) highlighted Quantz's inventive and innovative spirit. She took a broad view of his activities as a flute player, pedagogue and instrument maker, and described Quantz's striving for constant improvement.
The last speaker was Dorothea Seel of the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, who concentrated on the period after the death of Quantz. A recognized expert on flutes and flute music of the late eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries, she paid particular attention to the period spanning Quantz to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. She characterized the transverse flute as a central instrument of the Enlightenment, highlighting its influence on social and cultural discourse. Using Mozart's compositions as an example, Seel illustrated how the flute took on a role of self-expression for the elite and how it simultaneously became a mirror of both the empfindsamer Stil and discourse on gender.
Finally, Seel, in her capacity as flautist, together with the fortepianist Christoph Hammer, gave the concert on the last day, entitled ‘Die Zauberflöte: Ein Instrument im Zeitalter der Aufklärung’ (The Magic Flute: An Instrument in the Age of Enlightenment). A colourful concert with music from the second half of the eighteenth century was played on various traverso replicas together with a fortepiano made by Frank Hubbard and Allan Winkler (Boston/Medford, MA, USA, 2006, catalogue no. 6139, replica of a fortepiano by Johann Andreas Stein).
Special thanks go to the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, which made this conference possible with its generous support. The conference papers will be published in the 2024 edition of the Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung, which is expected to come out in 2025.
