Fantasia
Instrumental music that follows its ideas rather than a fixed form
Related
A fantasia does not follow a fixed form: ideas are joined by the composer's imagination, and the music may change key, speed or texture without warning. Renaissance and Baroque fantasias were often products of improvised counterpoint; Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue sets freedom beside strictness.
In the nineteenth century fantasias often took existing themes as material: Schumann, Liszt and Sarasate wrote fantasias on operatic tunes. The difference from variations is that variations reshape one theme step by step, while a fantasia lets its material change freely between sections.
Listen without hunting for "theme, development, recapitulation". Mark the seams between sections instead: where the tempo turns, where the key shifts, where freedom gives way to strict writing. The seams are where the composer stages the imagination.
Sources
- 幻想曲的自由写法、巴洛克对位与现代改编，参 The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, "Fantasia"；本文为原创表述
Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.