Fantasias

The labels attached to Baroque music can sometimes be confusing. Remember, Bach did not call his “English Suites” by that name, so we are perhaps chasing a false scent if we ask “In what ways are they English?” Similarly, the plethora of names attached to opening movements suggests more contrast than usually exists. Last year we heard performances of Bach’s keyboard toccatas. Today we turn to the fantasias. And the differences? Just enough to keep Baroque specialists awake at night. Similar movements for lute or keyboard had been called toccata, fantasia, canzona, ricercar, prelude, praeambulum, and more. All serve a few essential functions: to check tuning (an important point for lutenists), to establish the key, and to provide an improvisatory display of the performer’s ability.
When followed by a fugue or other imitative genre, this opening flourish creates a perfectly poised structure: free prelude versus strict counterpoint, textural color versus melodic line, brilliance versus the learned style. Separation between prelude and fugue was “more honored in the breach than the observance,” to quote Shakespeare. The term fantasia appeared as early as 1520, and within a few generations, composers were already including counterpoint and fugue within their free ramblings. From Hamburg to Paris to Venice, one’s ability to improvise in the “fantasy style” was a point of pride and a professional calling-card, particularly with organists. It became a showcase for musical skill. Hence, fantasias gradually expanded to encompass multiple sections, some based on dance rhythms, some based on fugue. Certain composers toyed with pithy chromaticism and daring harmonies. Bach’s son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, argued that the harmonic foundation was critical and should be the starting point for all fantasias. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Chopin, Brahms, and others made important contributions to the genre.
J. S. Bach’s fantasias appeared at different points in his career, although we have scant evidence by which to date them with any certainty. Spurious examples have been bequeathed under Bach’s name, but we think he wrote ten altogether for harpsichord and organ. At least half appear to be youthful works stemming from Bach’s first organ jobs at Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar (1706-17). Today we hear the G-minor Fantasia, BWV 917, marked by a chromatic, fugal main section surrounded by the briefest rhetorical flourishes. The only time Bach writes anything faster than eighth notes is at the very beginning and very end. Lasting less than three minutes, its brevity reinforces its preludial function. Perhaps Bach introduced ample counterpoint into the main Fantasia because no companion fugue was requested of him.
Around the same time (ca. 1708), Bach composed the Fantasia and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 944. Lasting about six minutes, it is a much more substantial work than BWV 917. Bach notated the opening section as a series of chordal outlines to be arpeggiated or “fleshed out” at the discretion of the player. After cadencing on the dominant, Bach plunges into a vigorous three-voice fugue. The lengthy subject has all the features of his best instrumental fugue themes: contrast between rising and falling motion, steady rapid notes, and clear harmonic underpinning. Animated by the skipping countertheme, this fugue never lets off the accelerator until the final measure. It demonstrates perfectly Bach’s desire to fuse brilliant textures with strict counterpoint.
The largest fantasia on the program is also in A minor, BWV 904. In this piece, a mature Bach has clearly settled into a more balanced structure such as one finds in the Well-Tempered Clavier. Almost certainly written during his time at Leipzig (ca. 1730), BWV 904 contains equal parts free chordal unfolding and rigorous four-voice fugue. The fantasia portion opens with a stock harmonic progression (the so-called lament bass, falling by step from tonic to the dominant); indeed, harmony seems to be the clear motivating force as Bach slides deftly from one chord to another. The ensuing fugue wonderfully integrates slow and fast rhythms, as well as stepwise passage and skips. At the midpoint Bach recaptures some of the chromatic flavor of the fantasia in order to build momentum to the finish.
Arguably his most well-known Fantasia is the curious Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, BWV 903. I say “curious” because Bach did not typically go in for such experimentation, whose interest centers on fantastical displays of scalework devoid of contrapuntal bolstering. (Glenn Gould, one of the modern eras most devoted Bach interpreters, famously referred to the opening Fantasia as a “monstrosity”!) There had been works titled Chromatic Fantasia before Bach, though in those cases the “chromatic” element refers to the filling in of all pitches in a descending bassline. The term itself derives from the Greek term for color (chromos), and the most obvious connection is that chromaticism in music provides color or contrast against the normative, major or minor scale in use at any moment.
The Fantasia opens with a virtuosic flourish and barely backs down from its extroverted stance. Rising and falling chromatic sequences and evaded cadences drive the momentum all the way to the final chord. He clearly gestures toward the toccata genre with the freely improvised passages; at several points, Bach only provides a harmonic sketch that the performer is free to realize in various ways. Small contrast arrives in a short recitative, though even here it is the striking chord changes that create the lasting impression. In the ensuing fugue, one can hear echoes of the older chromatic tradition. But rather than “coloring” a descending harmonic bassline as Renaissance and early Baroque composers had done, Bach fills in the chromatic steps within the rising fugue subject. Of course, as this subject migrates through the texture, it creates all manner of interesting chordal effects. The whole work may not typify Bach, and in some ways it strides onstage as a romanticized neo-Baroque hybrid—perhaps explaining why it found such favor with a generation of virtuosi in the late 19th century. Still, the impact is hard to deny. And it continues to impress that such brilliant textures were once the standard fare for a host of inspired instrumental composers in the 17th century.

“What’s in a name?” In the bigger picture, I doubt anyone could claim such a work must be called a Fantasia—rather than a Prelude or a Toccata—based on purely musical considerations. Moreover, we know that Bach often changed designations between drafts of similar pieces. So perhaps a Bach fantasia by any other name would sound just as sweet…

(c) Jason Stell