Friedrich Dülon

Friedrich Ludwig Dülon (14 August 1768 – 7 July 1826) was one of the most prominent and famous flute-virtuoso musicians of the Classical era, being one of the first flutists to be considered gifted on Western concert flute. At the age of 40 he had acquired more than 300 concerts in his repertoire. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart devoted a 9-verse poem entitled The blind flute player Dülon on the journey.

Life Dülon was born in Oranienburg, Kingdom of Prussia. Although he went blind due to an eye infection caused by medical malpractice when he was only six weeks old, this did not prevent him from taking music lessons, first from his father, a music-loving tax official, and later from organist Johann Karl Anderson (1774–1815) who taught him piano and figured bass, and the equally blind flutist Joseph Winter who had arrived in town on 16 March 1778. When he was 9 his musical talent struck by the fact that he had already composed a minuet. like this his famous career as a touring virtuoso.

During the 1780s Dülon toured constantly all over Europe with his father and sister. During a visited to Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach in Hamburg in 1783, he played the A-minor sonata to him who then commented that it was really odd that the king, for whom he had written that sonata, could not play it unlike the blind Dülon. On the other hand, Dülon suggested that Bach play his Hamburger Sonata in G Major, Wq. 133 instead. He was also on friendly terms with Karl Benda, son of Czech violinist and composer Franz Benda. In the summer of 1789, Friedrich Hölderlin took flute lessons with Dülon in Tübingen. Up to 1787 his travels took him to Leipzig where he played duets with Johann George Tromlitz, to Berlin, where he met Johann Philipp Kirnberger and Johann Friedrich Reichardt, and also London, where he performed at court. Benda was the concertmaster of the Royal Opera House in Potsdam at the time. The first four lines of his poem reads: Du guter Dülon klage nicht, Daß Nacht umflort dein Angesicht; Hast du nicht tiefes Herzgefühl? Nicht zauberisches Flötenspiel? It is for this meeting that musicologist John A. Rice suggests Dülon might have well been the real inspiration behind Mozart's Tamino in his The Magic Flute.