Fantasia

The fantasia is a composition governed by the composer's invention rather than by a prescribed formal scheme: its sections follow fantasy in the older sense, juxtaposing improvisatory flourishes, strict counterpoint, dance and song within a single span. It arose in the sixteenth century as the written trace of lute and keyboard improvisation, became a vehicle for contrapuntal mastery in *Purcell*'s viol fantasias and *Bach*'s "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue", and served the Classical and Romantic eras as the performer's licence to improvise in public, from *Mozart* and *Schubert* to *Liszt*'s operatic paraphrases and *Vaughan Williams*'s orchestral "Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis".