Admired by Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven for his harmonic audacity and his great musical personality, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach gradually regained his place among the major composers in the history of music. His music inaugurated the classical century at the same time as it sometimes seemed to announce the romanticism that would come much later. Under the influence of the great flautist and composer Johann Joachim Quantz, whom he had known when they both worked at the court of Frederick the Great, the (flautist) king of Prussia, he wrote a series of works for the royal instrument such as this Concerto in G major WG 169.

Already new in its length (nearly 25 minutes), it was also new in its scholarly writing, challenging musicians and listeners alike. "Emanuel Bach is the father, we are the children" said Mozart jokingly, something that Amadeus himself seems to remember in Concerto No. 2 in D major KV 314.