In an autobiographical sketch from 1754 Johann Joachim Quantz writes that he had composed several quartets for flute and strings. Until very recently, though, no surviving works by Quantz really fit that description, despite the efforts of some scholars to shoehorn some of Quantz's surviving flute concertos into the genre of flute quartet. In 1999, however, the archives of the Berlin Sing-Akademie, whose more than 5,000 items had never been properly cataloged and which had been missing since 1945, turned up in Kiev. Upon their return to Berlin two years later, the archives were at last made available to scholars, who quickly found that they contained much previously unknown material. One of those scholars, flutist and musicologist Mary Oleskiewicz, discovered the present six flute quartets, which are unambiguously attributed to Quantz in eighteenth-century copies that were perhaps associated with the circle around Sara Levy in Berlin. The quartets are obviously early works by Quantz, dating from his years in Dresden (1718–1741), most likely from sometime in the mid-1720s. The quartets are highly contrapuntal in style, quite unlike the more galant writing adopted by Quantz after his move to Berlin. Since these quartets were not published during Quantz's lifetime and their existence was unknown to 19th- and 20th-century performers, Steglein Publishing is pleased to present these works in their first-ever published edition, consisting of a score and five parts (flute, violin, viola, basso, and a separate continuo realization by David Schulenberg).

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