Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] 83

Fanshawe, David (Arthur)

(b Paignton, 19 April 1942). English composer and ethnomusicologist. On leaving school he worked in documentary films as an apprentice editor but in 1965 took up a scholarship at the RCM, where his teachers included John Lambert. His passion for world traditional music influenced his early composition Salaams, first performed at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 1970, for which he drew on music from Bahrain. He scored a major international success with African Sanctus, which was inspired by expeditions to Egypt, Sudan, Uganda and Kenya (1969–72), and became the subject of a 1975 BBC TV documentary. The score combines field recordings of traditional music with a Western mass setting, including sections in a pop idiom, and the original recording achieved a gold disc; the work, which has been choreographed, was extended in 1993 by the addition of a concluding Dona nobis pacem. His writings include African Sanctus: a Story of Travel and Music (London, 1975). Between 1978 and 1989 Fanshawe travelled extensively in the Pacific islands, collecting material for his compositional project Pacific Odyssey. He owns a collection of several thousand tape recordings of traditional musics, principally from Africa and the Pacific, which form part of a multi-media archive (The Fanshawe Collections), and he has produced several commercial recordings from the material it contains.

WORKS

(selective list)

Requiem for the Children of Aberfan, orch, 1968; Salaams, vv, pf, perc, 1970; African Sanctus, S, vv, ens, tape, 1972; Pacific Odyssey, 1978–; The Awakening, intermezzo, vc/va, pf, 1992; Dona nobis pacem: a Hymn for World Peace, S, vv, ens, tape, 1993; Celtic Lullaby, vv, 1998; Millennium Fanfare and Millennium March, orch/band, 1999

Film scores: Tarka the Otter (dir. D. Cobham), 1987; Dirty Weekend (dir. M. Winner), 1993

Incid music for TV: Softly Softly; Three Men in a Boat; When the Boat Comes In

Principal publisher: Warner/Chappell

MERVYN COOKE

Fantasia

(It., Sp., Ger., Eng.; Eng., Fr., Ger. Fantasie; Fr., Ger. Phantasie; Fr. fantaisie, fantasye, phantaisie; Eng., Ger. Phantasia; Ger. Fantasey; Eng. fancie, fancy, fansye, fantasy, fantazia, fantazie, fantazy, phansie, phantasy, phantazia).

A term adopted in the Renaissance for an instrumental composition whose form and invention spring ‘solely from the fantasy and skill of the author who created it’ (Luis de Milán, 1535–6). From the 16th century to the 19th the fantasia tended to retain this subjective licence, and its formal and stylistic characteristics may consequently vary widely from free, improvisatory types to strictly contrapuntal and more or less standard sectional forms.

1. To 1700.

2. 18th century.

3. 19th and 20th centuries.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

CHRISTOPHER D.S. FIELD (1), E. EUGENE HELM (2), WILLIAM DRABKIN/R (3)

Fantasia

1. To 1700.

(i) Terminology.

(ii) Italy.

(iii) Spain.

(iv) France.

(v) Netherlands.

(vi) Germany.

(vii) Poland.

(viii) Great Britain.

Fantasia, §1: To 1700

(i) Terminology.

In the general senses of ‘imagination’, ‘product of the imagination’, ‘caprice’, derivatives of the Greek ‘phantasia’ were current in the principal European languages by the late Middle Ages. The term was used as a title in German keyboard manuscripts before 1520, and in printed tablatures originating as far apart as Valencia, Milan, Nuremberg and perhaps Lyons by 1536. Its earliest appearances in a musical context focus on the imaginative musical ‘idea’, however, rather than on a particular compositional genre. A three-part, imitative, textless composition by Josquin is headed ‘Ile fantazies de Joskin’ (I-Rc 2856, c1480–85; ed. in New Josquin Edition, 27.15), but it is doubtful whether this title had generic significance; more probably it was intended to emphasize the ‘freely invented’ (rather than borrowed) nature of the motivic material. Similarly a letter written by the Ferrarese agent Gian to Ercole d'Este on 2 September 1502 refers to Isaac's four-part instrumental piece La mi la sol la sol la mi (ed. in DTÖ, xxviii, Jg.xiv/1, 1907/R) as ‘uno moteto sopra una fantasia’: here it is clearly the eight-note soggetto ostinato that is signified by the term ‘fantasia’.

When Hermann Finck (1556) referred to ‘the requirements of Master Mensura, Master Taktus, Master Tonus and especially Master Bona fantasia’, he meant to stress the importance of musical imagination. The sense of ‘the play of imaginative invention’ underlies the word's use as a title in the 16th century, notably by lute or vihuela improvvisatori such as Francesco Canova da Milano and Luis de Milán. Elsewhere it may signify actual improvisation on an instrument, as when Bermudo and Santa María wrote of the art of ‘tañer fantesia’.

From the outset, the term was used interchangeably with other generic names like recercar and Preambel. With Francesco da Milano there is little or no distinction between ‘fantasia’ and ‘recercar’; the same piece often bears different labels in different sources, and both words may even be found in combination (as when Pontus de Tyard describes Francesco sitting down with his lute ‘à rechercher une fantaisie’). But ‘fantasia’ seems to have been the more colloquial name: Bottrigari (1594) spoke of a ricercare from Padovano's Primo libro as ‘a certain “fantasia” (as the instrumentalists say) of his’. Classification of the fantasia as a kind of prelude occurred especially in Germany and the Netherlands, from the Preambeln of Neusidler and Gerle to Praetorius (who described it under a heading, ‘Of Preludes in their own right’). The word was equated at different times with tentos (Milán), voluntary (Byrd sources, Mace), automaton, which means much the same (Phalèse), capriccio (Lindner, Praetorius, Froberger sources), canzon (Terzi, Banchieri), or fuga (Banchieri, Hagius, Scheidt, Froberger sources). In Spain, the technical benefit of fantasias for ‘exercising the hands’ was frequently emphasized.

An essential of the fantasia is its freedom from words. The musician was free ‘to employ whatever inspiration comes to him, without expressing the passion of any text’ (MersenneHU, 1636–7); where voices were used, as by the vihuelists Diego Pisador and Esteban Daza or in ensemble fantasias ‘for singing and playing’, it was to sol-fa. Point-of-imitation technique (a development of vocal polyphony) appeared early, however, and not only in ensemble fantasies: the illusion of the solo lutenist spinning a web of imitative counterpoint had already been created by Marco Dall’Aquila, Francesco da Milano (who fused imitation with virtuoso instrumental style; see ex.1), Luys de Narváez (whose fantasias approach the style of motet transcriptions) and, most completely, by Valentin Bakfark. Tomás de Santa María (1565) stressed the importance of counterpoint in ‘fantasia-playing’; Zarlino (3/1573, iii, chap. 26), writing of point-of-imitation technique, remarked: ‘Such a manner of composing is demanded by the practitioners in composing from fantasy’ (‘comporre di fantasia’). By the late 16th century in Italy the fantasia (along with the ricercare) had become a touchstone of contrapuntal skill; free from words, a series of fugal sections might be given unity by recurrence of a subject, or an entire movement be fashioned from a single subject or theme-complex; themes were modified by inversion, augmentation and rhythmic transformation. A similarly exhaustive approach to the treatment of subjects was adopted by Sweelinck and other northern European organists.

In England, emphasis was rather on diversity of material. According to Morley (1597, p.162) monothematic fantasias were seldom essayed except ‘to see what may be done upon a point’ or ‘to shew the diversitie of sundrie mens vaines upon one subject’. He insisted, however, on unity of mode, which was often made explicit in continental sources by designations such as ‘Fantasia del primer tono’. His description of the ‘fantasie’ (ibid., p.181), borrowed by Praetorius (PraetoriusSM) and echoed by Simpson (A Compendium of Practical Musick, 1667), characterizes this ‘chiefest kind of musicke which is made without a dittie’ as

when a musician taketh a point at his pleasure, and wresteth and turneth it as he list, making either much or little of it as shall seeme best in his own conceit. In this may more art be showne then in any other musicke, because the composer is tide to nothing but that he may adde, deminish, and alter at his pleasure … . Other thinges you may use at your pleasure, as bindings with discordes, quicke motions, slow motions, proportions, and what you list. Likewise, this kind of musick is with them who practise instruments of parts in greatest use, but for voices it is but sildome used.

A widespread type of the 16th and early 17th centuries is the ‘parody’ fantasia. This took as its starting-point material from a polyphonic model (motet, mass, chanson, madrigal or even another fantasia), often appearing in the source with an intabulation of the model itself. Early examples are those of Francesco da Milano, Enriquez de Valderrábano and G.P. Paladino; Claudius Sebastiani (1563) taught that student instrumentalists should practise decorating the end of a song or motet with ‘a fantasia gathered from the said song’. The name ‘fantasia’ was also occasionally given to pieces treating a sacred or secular melody in cantus-firmus or paraphrase technique (Rocco Rodio, Eustache Du Caurroy, Paul Luetkeman, Mathias Reymann, Scheidt, Steigleder), but most of the 17th-century German chorale settings now classified as ‘Choralfantasien’ were not so called in the sources (see Chorale fantasia.

The following discussion of the fantasia in the 16th and 17th centuries is organized by performing medium (lute, keyboard, consort) in each of the major European centres of composition.

Fantasia, §1: To 1700