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For more information on fantasia, visit Britannica.com.

(It.; Eng. fancy, fantasy; Fr. fantasie; Ger. Fantasie, Phantasie)

An instrumental piece in which the imagination of the composer takes precedence over conventional styles and forms.

The lute fantasias of Francesco da Milano, widely imitated in the 16th century, integrate imitation techniques with brilliant idiomatic play. The lute (or vihuela) fantasia was also cultivated by Luis de Milán in Spain and composers elsewhere, notably Dowland in England. The keyboard fantasia, whose types included arrangements of vocal polyphony, variations on the hexachord, free ricercares and (in Germany) chorale-based pieces, came to the fore in the late 16th century and was popular in the 17th; composers include Frescobaldi, Sweelinck, Scheidt, Froberger, Byrd and Orlando Gibbons. Ensemble fantasias were written in many countries, too, but especially in England, where Purcell paid tribute to a long tradition to which Byrd, Gibbons, Jenkins, William Lawes and Locke had contributed.

While the ensemble type had largely died out by 1700, the keyboard fantasia remained important, especially in Germany. It soon severed its links with imitative counterpoint; J.S. Bach's best-known example, the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue (bwv 903), combines elements of toccata and recitative. C.P.E. Bach's fantasias are rhapsodic and improvisatory works for clavichord, many of them unbarred, but like Mozart's piano fantasias their sections are organized into a coherent structure. To the Romantics the fantasia offered the means of formal expansion without the constraints of rigid sonata form. Beethoven, in his two sonatas ‘quasi una fantasia’ (op.27), pointed the way for the piano fantasias of Schubert, Chopin and Schumann. The term ‘fantasia’ was also used, by Liszt and others, for virtuoso pieces based on themes from an opera or other work. 20th-century composers, too, have used the term for extended instrumental pieces (e.g. Schoenberg's op.47) and for free variations (e.g. Tippett's Fantasia on a Theme by Corelli).

Disney's seminal 1940 cartoon contains some masterpieces of animated choreography. Fairies, fish, and mushrooms dance to sections of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker while Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours becomes a ballet for ostriches, hippos, and alligators. Disney's team made extensive drawings of real dancers including Baranova, Riabouchinska, and Lichine to ensure the comic accuracy of the movement.

• Types of Music and Composition - fantasia: composition in fanciful improvisational form
• Utopia - fantasia: artistic work of free imagination and fancy

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (September 2011)

The fantasia (from Italian: fantasia; also English: fantasy, fancy, phantasy, German: Fantasie, Phantasie, French: fantaisie) is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form (as with the impromptu).

The term was first applied to music during the 16th century, at first to refer to the imaginative musical "idea" rather than to a particular compositional genre. Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France. From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milán. Its form and style consequently ranges from the freely improvisatory to the strictly contrapuntal, and also encompasses more or less standard sectional forms (Field 2001).

In the Baroque and Classical music eras, a fantasia was typically a piece for keyboard instruments with alternating sections of rapid passagework and slower, more melodic passages. From the Baroque period, J. S. Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903, for harpsichord; Great Fantasia and Fugue in G minor, BWV 542, for organ; and Fantasia and Fugue in C minor, BWV 537, for organ are examples. For an example from the Classical period, see Mozart's Fantasia in D minor, K. 397 for fortepiano, along with his Fantasia in C minor, K. 475. In contemporary music, Busoni's Fantasia contrappuntistica or Corigliano's Fantasia on an ostinato are examples of a fantasia.

The term also referred in the late Renaissance era (specifically in British Tudor music) to pieces for viols, characteristically—though not always—alternating, in this case rapid fugal sections with slower sections in slow notes and sometimes clashing harmonies.^{[citation needed]} According to the Oxford Dictionary of Music, in the 16th century the instrumental fantasia was a strict imitation of the vocal motet (Kennedy 2006). Henry Purcell's fantasias are the last Baroque representatives of the breed, although Walter Willson Cobbett, in the opening decades of the 20th century, attempted to resurrect something of this style via a competition, to which works like John Ireland's and Frank Bridge's Phantasie Trios, Benjamin Britten's Phantasie Quartet (for oboe and strings) and other music owe their existence.^{[citation needed]}

In the Romantic period, two contradictory trends greatly affected the fantasia: one was the decline of formal improvisation as a test of the compositional technique; the other was the move by composers toward freer forms.^{[citation needed]} Chopin's Fantaisie in F minor, Op. 49, combines various keyboard textures of the stile brillante with the classical sonata paradigm, resulting in a work of unorthodox but sophisticated form.^{[original research?]} Schumann's Fantasie in C, Op. 17, is a cornerstone of the Romantic piano repertoire. His numerous 'fantasy pieces' are character works on a smaller scale, often bearing descriptive titles.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Canzona
• Capriccio
• Chorale fantasia
• Chromatic fantasia
• Ricercar
• Tiento
• Voluntary

Sources

• Field, Christopher D. S. 2001. "Fantasia." The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, second edition, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan Publishers.
• Kennedy, Michael. 2006. The Oxford Dictionary of Music, second edition, revise, Joyce Bourne, associate editor. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.

Further reading

• Antcliffe, Herbert. 1920. "The Recent Rise of Chamber Music in England". Musical Quarterly 6, no. 1 (January): 12–23.
• Meyer, Ernst Hermann. 1946. English Chamber Music. London: Lawrence & Wishart. Reprinted, New York: Da Capo Press, 1971. ISBN 0-306-70037-9. Reference on the early English fantasy (fantazy, fantasie, fantasia.).

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - fantasi, potpourri af kendte melodier

Nederlands (Dutch)
artistiek werk in vrije vorm, fantastisch/bizar iets

Français (French)
n. - fantaisie

Deutsch (German)
n. - (Mus.) Fantasie

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (μουσ.) φαντασία

Italiano (Italian)
fantasia

Português (Portuguese)
n. - fantasia (f) (Mus.)

Русский (Russian)
фантазия, попурри

Español (Spanish)
n. - fantasía

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - fantasistycke, potpurri

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
幻想曲

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 幻想曲

한국어 (Korean)
n. - (음악) 환상곡 , 환상적인 문예작품

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 幻想曲, ファンタジア, メドレー

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) الفانتازيه , لحن موسيقي أو أثر أدبي متحرر من قيود الشكل التقليديه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮יצירה מוסיקלית לא במבנה מקובל, פנטסיה‬

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