Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, came to power in 1740. Although he is remembered in history books mostly for his military astuteness, he was also devoted to the life of the mind and the spirit. His court in Potsdam was one of the great centers of intellectual activity in Europe in the eighteenth century. The celebrated mathematician Leonhard Euler Spent twenty-five years there. Many other mathematicians and scientists came, as well as philosophers–including Voltaire and La Mettrie, who wrote some of their most influential works while there.
But music was Frederick’s real love. He was an avid flutist and composer. Some of his compositions are occasionally performed even to this day. Frederic was one of the first patrons of the arts to recognize the virtues of the newly developed “piano-forte” (soft-loud”). the piano had been developed in the first half of the eighteenth century as a modification of the harpsichord. The problem with the harpsichord was that pieces could only be played at a rather uniform loudness–there was no way to strike one note more loudly than its neighbors. The “soft-loud”, as its name implies, provided a remedy to this problem. From Italy, where Bartolomeo Cristofori had made the first one, The soft-loud had spread widely. Gottfried Silbermann, the foremost German organ builder of the day, was endeavoring to make a “perfect” piano-forte. Undoubtedly King Frederick was the greatest supporter of his efforts–it is said that the King owned as many as fifteen Silbermann pianos!
–Douglas Hofstadter
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