Fantasia (musical form)

Its earliest use as a title was in German keyboard manuscripts from before 1520, and by 1536 is found in printed tablatures from Spain, Italy, Germany, and France.From the outset, the fantasia had the sense of "the play of imaginative invention", particularly in lute or vihuela composers such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milán.Composers such as William Byrd & Orlando Gibbons wrote many surviving keyboard fantasias, while also expanding the genre with outstanding examples for recorders & viols.Walter Willson Cobbett, in the opening decades of the 20th century, attempted to revive the fantasia style via a competition, to which works like the Phantasie trios and quartets by William Hurlstone, Armstrong Gibbs, John Ireland, Herbert Howells and Frank Bridge owe their existence,[3] as does Benjamin Britten's Phantasy in F minor for string quintet written in 1932, the year in which he also composed a Phantasy Quartet for oboe and strings.[4] According to the musicologist Donald Francis Tovey, "the term 'fantasia' would adequately cover all post-classical forms of concerto".