It was through Wendling that he came into contact with Ferdinand Dejean, an amateur flutist and local physician and well-known medical scholar who commissioned the works from Mozart.

Dejean requested that Mozart provide "three short, simple concerti and a couple of quartets for the flute".

Dejean is also leaving for Paris tomorrow and, because I have only finished two concertos and three quartets for him, has sent me 96 gulden too little, evidently supposing that this was the half of 200): but he must pay me in full, for that was my agreement with the Wendlings, and I can send him the other pieces later.

I could, to be sure, scribble off things the whole day long, but a composition of this kind goes out into the world, and naturally I do not want to have cause to be ashamed of my name on the title-page.

[3] The concerto is scored for a standard orchestral string section, two oboes (which are replaced with two flutes in the Adagio movement), and two horns.

Throughout the movement, the soloist and the orchestra create a musical dialogue while passing melodic lines back and forth.