The Fantasia has been an important form since the late sixteenth century, at which time it was essentially a rhapsodic one-movement work exploring a single subject. Throughout the several hundred years of its existence, the fantasia has continued to suggest quasi-improvisational thematic development with spontaneous flights of imagination and abrupt changes of mood within a flexible structure.

Carl Vine (b. 1954) writes about his Fantasia: “I call this single-movement piano quintet Fantasia because it doesn’t follow a strict formal structure and contains little structural repetition or recapitulation. The central section is generally slower than the rest and is followed by a presto finale, but otherwise related motifs tend to flow one from the other organically through the course of the work. It is ‘pure’ music that uses no external imagery, allusion, narrative, or poetry.”