text: Arts and education Frederick was a patron of music. The court musicians he supported included C. P. E. Bach, Carl Heinrich Graun and Franz Benda. A meeting with Johann Sebastian Bach in 1747 in Potsdam led to Bach's writing The Musical Offering. He was a talented musician and composer in his own right, playing the transverse flute, and composing 121 sonatas for flute and continuo, four concertos for flute and strings, four sinfonias, three military marches and seven arias. Additionally, the Hohenfriedberger Marsch was allegedly written by Frederick to commemorate his victory in the Battle of Hohenfriedberg. His flute sonatas were often composed in collaboration with Johann Joachim Quantz, who was Frederick's occasional music tutor in his youth and joined his court as composer and flute maker in 1741. Frederick's flute sonatas are written in the Baroque style in which flute plays the melody, sometimes imitating operatic vocal styles like the aria and recitative, while the accompaniment was usually played by just one instrument per part to highlight the delicate sound of the flute.
  Frederick wrote sketches, outlines and libretti for opera that were included as part of the repertoire for the Berlin Opera House. These works, which were often completed in collaboration with Graun, included the operas Coriolano (1749), Silla (1753), Montezuma (1755), and Il tempio d'Amore (1756). Frederick saw opera as playing an important role in imparting enlightenment philosophy, using it to critique superstition and the Pietism that still held sway in Prussia. He attempted to broaden access to opera by making admission to it free.