Fantasia

Instrumental music free of fixed form, built from improvisatory sections and sudden turns.

Related

BaroqueFantasiaCounterpointHarpsichord

A fantasia is instrumental music free of fixed form, combining improvisatory sections, sudden modulations and flexible tempo.

Origins and dating

In the sixteenth century the term meant an improvised keyboard or lute piece, often imitating a motet. In the baroque era Bach paired fantasias with fugues, creating a prelude-and-fugue design. Mozart and Beethoven used it to link improvisation and sonata, and Schubert, Chopin and Schumann made it a piano work.

Listening features

A fantasia changes tempo, metre and key within one movement, and sections need not end with full cadences. It may open with arpeggios or recitative chords, as if testing the instrument. The melody can stop for scales or ornaments. Structure comes from mood and key relationships rather than recapitulated themes. Each turn is signalled by a sudden change in bass or harmony.

Figures

Bach wrote the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, Mozart the Fantasia in C minor K.475, Schubert the Wanderer Fantasy, Chopin the Fantasia in F minor Op.49, and Schumann the Fantasia in C major Op.17.

Lineage

It grows from the Renaissance improvised prelude and motet imitation and leads to the romantic character piece, symphonic poem and free forms.

Misconceptions

A fantasia is not unstructured, since its irregular sections follow an audible logic. Nor does it mean careless playing, because many free passages are precisely written.

Sources

• The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed., entry Fantasia — definitions and chronology checked, not quoted
• Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. 2 (Oxford University Press, 2005) — baroque keyboard context checked, not quoted

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.