Organ concertos, Op. 4 (Handel) had already been established during his one-year position as cathedral organist in Halle in 1702. Handel's organ concertos thus have a special place in his oeuvre. They paved the way for Mozart and Beethoven, who like Handel achieved fame in their lifetimes as composers and performers of their own concertos. In the sinfonias of some of his cantatas, Johann Sebastian Bach had already introduced concerto movements for organ and orchestra. However, Bach's organs in both Weimar and Leipzig were large organs with double keyboards and pedals, powerful instruments that could only dominate a baroque orchestra. Bach's organ writing in the
Brandenburg-Prussia after the victory at Fehrbellin and the Brandenburg-Prussian advance in Swedish Pomerania during the Scanian War, Frederick William decided to establish a navy. He engaged Dutch merchant and shipowner Benjamin Raule as his advisor, who after a first personal meeting with Frederick William in 1675 settled in Brandenburg in 1676 and became the major figure of Brandenburg-Prussia's emerging naval and colonial enterprise. The Brandenburg-Prussian navy was established from ten ships which Frederick William leased from Raule, and achieved first successes in the war against Sweden supporting the siege of Stralsund and Stettin and the invasion of Rügen. In Pillau (now