Art & MusicGreek → English
Fantasia
/fænˈteɪʒə/noun
A musical piece in free form, following invention rather than a set structure.
The Greek roots
φαντασία
phantasía
appearance, imagination
Literally: “a making visible”
Follow a root:φαντασία4 words
The story of the word
Greek phantasia, from phainein, to bring to light, meant the mind's power to hold an image of something absent. Italian composers borrowed it for a piece that follows the player's imagination instead of dance form or fugue subject, and English took the Italian spelling in the eighteenth century. Phantom, phenomenon, phase and emphasis all trace back to the same verb.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
fantasyphantomphenomenonemphasis
In a sentence
She closed the recital with a Bach fantasia, played from memory.