Fantasia

/fænˈteɪ.zɪ.ə/ · noun

Meaning

(music, also figurative) A form of instrumental composition with a free structure and improvisational characteristics; specifically, one combining a number of well-known musical pieces..

Definitions by Sense

1. (music, also figurative) A form of instrumental composition with a free structure and improvisational characteristics; specifically, one combining a number of well-known musical pieces.
2. (chiefly art, by extension) Any work which is unstructured or comprises other works of different genres or styles.
3. A traditional festival of the inhabitants of the Maghreb (in northwest Africa) featuring exhibitions of horsemanship.

Example Sentences

The Fantasia, by Mr. [Pio] Cianchettini, is upon [Gioachino] Rossini's air "Tu che accendi," so often made the theme of piano forte lessons. […] Mr. Cianchettini's imagination is very vivid and full, and we know of nothing more florid or requiring lighter and more delicate touching than this Fantasia.

Miss [Eleanor Margaret] Geary is a brilliant pianiste, who make light of the modern difficulties set down for the instrument: her performance of [Theodor] Döhler's Anna Bolena fantasia was achieved without apparent effort, and won considerable applause; […] Miss E[lizabeth] Geary is a vocalist, possessing a sweet and flexible voice, […] this young lady also played a fantasia on the concertina very adroitly.

The little Italian party, before alluded to, had collected around the piano. The white and plump fingers of the gay and black-eyed daughter of the Roman marchioness were tripping lightly up and down the octaves of the instrument, and her little tastefully arranged head was merrily dancing from side to side, keeping time to the half-improvised phantasia, which trickled like a wayward stream from her hands.

She [Josepha Barbara Auernhammer] published subsequently many works of her own, (in all 63,) which, as well as her play, especially the extempore phantasias, were distinguished by much delicate feeling and a vivid imagination.

In classical music there are, as the analytical programs tell us, first subjects and second subjects, free fantasias, recapitulations, and codas; there are fugues, with counter-subjects, strettos, and pedal points; there are passacaglias on ground basses, canons ad hypodiapente, and other ingenuities, which have, after all, stood or fallen by their prettiness as much as the simplest folk-tune.

Among English composers working during the first half of the seventeenth century, John Coprario distinguished himself as a first-rate craftsman and as the innovator of the three-movement fantasia-suite. […] These pieces should be viewed in the context of his total output of eight two-part fantasias; ten three-part fantasias; seven four-part fantasias; […]

Representative as they are of [Georg Philipp] Telemann's introduction to Germany of the lighter and less contrpuntal galant style from France, these fantasias are also obvious precursors of the Classical sonata form.

In 1783 C[arl] P[hilipp] E[manuel] Bach's fourth collection of keyboard music for Kenner und Liebhaber was published by Brietkopf in Leipzig. […] For the first time in the Kenner und Liebhaber series, this volume contained two free fantasias in addition to sonatas and rondos, a novelty that not only caught the attention of the critics, but seems to have been considered by Bach as a particular selling point for the volume: […]

Synonyms for fantasia

Antonyms for fantasia

Related Words

Word Forms

• fantasias
• phantasia

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