Frederick II, King of Prussia, was much more than a military and political leader, writes Christopher Morley.

Bullied and beaten by an autocratic father who had a constant suspicious watch kept on him in order to divert him from his artistic leanings, the well-born young man attempted to flee but was brought back home and forced to witness the decapitation of one of the friends who had assisted him.

That young man was named Frederick, later to become Frederick II, King of Prussia, and generous patron of the arts and sciences as well as fulfilling his father Frederick William the First’s intentions that he should become a great military and political leader.

This year marks the tercentenary of the birth of this strong-minded individual who eventually became known as Frederick the Great, and there is much to celebrate in the artistic achievements of his enlightened court in Potsdam, near Berlin.

Frederick II’s palace of Sans Souci (“without care”) became a great mecca for many of the most glittering artistic and philosophical minds of the mid-18th century.

After sharing a lengthy correspondence with Frederick, the great French writer and philosopher Voltaire became a house-guest there between 1751 and 1753, though his relationship with Frederick ended in a massive falling-out.

Though the Prussian throne did not become his own until 1740, Frederick had already assembled an impressive entourage of musicians (to whom he paid spectacularly generous salaries) around him as an antidote to his activities in the military sphere and in statecraft.

Once he became king his ambitions were allowed to flower, resulting in liberalising governmental reforms and newly-founded cultural institutions, including the establishment of the Berlin Opera.

The nucleus of the opera company was assembled by Frederick’s well-paid music director Carl Heinrich Graun, who was sent on a lengthy tour of Italy trawling some of that country’s finest singers.

Graun himself was noted as an operatic composer whose methods of writing seem to anticipate those of Mozart: “He invariably neglected his operas until the last moment, composing them then with the utmost rapidity,” wrote Johann Friedrich Reichardt, one of Graun’s successors as Frederick’s Kapellmeister.

“He first finished the individual arias, either in his head or at the clavier, and afterwards wrote them out in clear copies without changing a single note; his first score was also the one used at the performances.”

But Reichardt also paid tribute to Frederick himself, who was a keen author of opera libretti, writing in French as well as German, and composing arias as well: “Several arias composed by the ‘great and inspired author of the history of Brandenburg’ – (in other words, Frederick) – were incorporated in the opera Demofoonte by Graun, and among these one gave evidence of great talent.”

Also prominent in Frederick’s circle was the flautist Johann Joachim Quantz, flute teacher to the king who, in fact, developed into an expert performer under his tutelage.

Quantz was the author of Essay of a Method for Playing the Transverse Flute, a compendious manual published in Berlin in 1752 not just concerned with flute-playing but also with performance practice and contemporary forms and styles.

Naturally, Quantz, Royal Prussian Chamber Musician, dedicated his book To the most, Serene, Great and Mighty Prince and Lord, Lord Frederick (sic), King in Prussia”.

And then, after a seemingly limitless list of Frederick’s other titles and lands, Quantz ends by referring to him as My most gracious King and Master.

He then goes on to pay him a more personal tribute: “The protection, and the high favour, which Your Royal Highness has vouchsafed the sciences in general, and music in particular, allow me to hope that Your Royal Highness will not refuse the same protection to my efforts also, and that a favourable eye may be found for that which I have projected here, according to my slight powers, in the service of music.”

The most famous member of Frederick the Great’s musical establishment was undoubtedly Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, second son of the mighty Johann Sebastian, and court harpsichordist in the King’s orchestra. CPE Bach was an important compositional link in the changing styles between his father’s high baroque form of utterance and the freer, more passionate expressiveness of the galant movement. His own music has been described as gloomy and turbulent and he was certainly careful to write as many works for Frederick’s flute as possible.

Towards the end of his life, Johann Sebastian visited his son in Potsdam, as a report in the ‘Spernersche Zeitung, Berlin’ for May 11, 1747 describes: “We hear from Potsdam that last Sunday the famous Kapellmeister from Leipzig, Mr Bach, arrived with the intention of hearing the excellent Royal music at that place... His Majesty went to the so-called ‘forte and piano’, condescending also to play, in person and without any preparation, a theme to be executed by Kapellmeister Bach in a fugue. This was done so happily... that not only His Majesty was pleased to show his satisfaction thereat, but also all those present were seized with astonishment...

“On Monday evening His Majesty again charged him with the execution of a fugue, in six parts, which he accomplished just as skilfully as on the previous occasion, to the pleasure of His Majesty and to the general admiration.”

On his return to Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach worked and worried at the King’s well-drawn fugue-subject, coming up with a heady compendium of musical treatments of the theme, posing a variety of technical conundrums, and enshrining it too in a trio sonata for violin, continuo and, of course, Frederick’s beloved flute.

He sent this ‘Musical Offering’, engraved on copper, to Potsdam, together with a fulsome dedication to “a Monarch whose greatness and power, as in all the sciences of war and peace, so especially in music, everyone must admire and revere”.

It had taken Bach much less than two months to produce this awe-inspiring masterpiece. And in producing this, he was inspired to compile an equally jaw-dropping collection, his testament of fugal writing entitled ‘The Art of Fugue’.

* The London Handel Players celebrate the tercentenary of the birth of Frederick the Great (January 24, 1712) in a concert at St Mary’s Church, Warwick on Tuesday January 31 (7.30pm). All details on 01926 776438.