fantasia
/fanˈteɪzɪə
/ /ˌfantəˈziːə /noun
1A musical composition with a free form and often an improvisatory style.Brahms's Violin Concerto begins with a long ritornello, but for most 19th-century composers sonata form and the fantasia were more important than the ritornello principle....
- The fanfare fantasia before the choral entrance even includes clams.
- The finale is a joyous fantasia on much of the music deployed earlier with such skill and evident delight.
1.1A musical composition based on several familiar tunes.Dowland, of course, had written seven lute fantasias based on his song ‘Break now, my heart, and die’ under the title Lacrimae, or Seven Teares....
- Glinka once again established formal and stylistic ground plans for future Russian composers in his orchestral fantasia Kamarinskaya, based on two Russian folk tunes.
- As with its corresponding number in the first orchestral set, the second movement - depicting a camp meeting - is a fantasia based mainly on ragtime dances Ives wrote for the piano in the early 1900s.
1.2A thing composed of a mixture of different forms or styles: the theatre is a kind of Moorish and Egyptian fantasia...
- This re-release of Amadeus, described by Shaffer as ‘a fantasia based on fact’, boasts 20 additional minutes of music and drama.
- Perelman's free-associative style spun fantasias out of girdle ads, tabloid tattle, sleazy pulp fiction and recipe prose.
- Based on Virginia Woolf's glittering fantasia written as a love-letter to Vita Sackville-West, the story covers four hundred years of history.
Origin
Early 18th century: from Italian, 'fantasy', from Latin phantasia (see fantasy).