Fantasia

fantasia (făntā`zhə) [Ital.,=fancy], musical composition not restricted to a formal design, but constructed freely in the manner of an improvisation. In the 16th and 17th cent., however, the term designated a contrapuntal piece employing imitation and thus was one of the forerunners of the fugue. The term is also applied to improvisatory pieces based on earlier works, e.g., Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on "Greensleeves."

---

fantasia

Musical composition free in form and inspiration, often for an instrumental soloist. Most fantasias try to convey the impression of improvisation. The first were Italian works for lute (c. 1530). Keyboard fantasias became common in the late 16th century; both organ and harpsichord fantasias flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries in Britain, Germany, and France. Fugal, imitative texture, sometimes highly learned in character, was common from the beginning, often alternating with running passagework and highly chromatic chordal passages in free rhythms. Ensemble fantasias were widely composed as well.

---

fantasia

1. any musical composition of a free or improvisatory nature

2. another word for fancy

---

Fantasia

music comes to life in animated cartoon. [Am. Cinema: Fantasia in Disney Films, 38–45]

See : Fantasy

---

Fantasia

an instrumental composition characterized by an improvisational opening and the free development of the musical idea. In the 16th century fantasias for the guitar, lute, and keyboards were polyphonic pieces similar to the ricerar and the toccata. In the 17th century the fantasia was influenced by the concerto, symphony, overture, sonata, and rondo forms. In the 17th and 18th centuries it often served as an introduction to another piece—a fugue or sonata—as in Mozart’s Fantasy in C minor. In the 19th century, the fantasia came to resemble the sonata, as in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, one of two sonatas with the subtitle “quasi una fantasia.”

Fantasias were often conceived as free versions of the sonata form, examples being the piano fantasias of Schumann and Chopin. At times they resembled the symphonic poem in structure, as in Schubert’s piano fantasia The Wanderer. The fantasia was also popular as a virtuoso piece in which folk melodies or themes from operas and ballets were developed, usually in the form of variations. Examples include Liszt’s piano fantasia based on themes from Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Fantasy on Russian Themes for violin and orchestra.