Fancy

What it means

Fancy is the English name for an instrumental fantasia of the late 16th and the 17th centuries. The word means roughly “notion” or “whim” and is used in England alongside “fantasy” and “fantazia.” It denotes a freely invented instrumental piece not tied to a text or dance, running in several connected sections.

Musical use

The fancy was written above all for a viol ensemble, the consort, or for keyboard instruments such as the virginal and organ. Its sections usually begin with entries of a theme led in imitation, as known from the continental fantasia and ricercar, and alternate between contrapuntal density and looser, dance-like passages. Important English composers of the genre are William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Jenkins, and Henry Purcell.

The fancy should be distinguished from the later, harmonically freer fantasia of the 18th and 19th centuries and from the ricercar, which is stricter and usually laid out around a single theme. In English usage the fancy can often hardly be separated from the fantasy; it denotes the older, counterpoint-marked form.

Performance practice

When playing in a consort, make every theme entry audible: the voice with the theme steps forward, the others hold back. Count the rests between entries exactly, since in this genre the effect arises from the precise interplay of equal voices.