An old English spelling of Fantasia, adopted in competitions established in 1905 by walter wilson Cobbett and the Worshipful Company of Musicians as the name for a new type of chamber music piece. Cobbett saw phantasies as a ‘modern analogue’ to the viol fantasias of Tudor and Stuart times: his aim was to elicit works for specified ensembles, of modest length, and without breaks between the contrasting sections, in which the composer's imagination would be given free play. The first competition (1905) was for a phantasy for string quartet, the second (1907) was for one for piano trio. Entrants had to be British, and prizewinners included William Hurlstone (1905), Frank Bridge (1905, 1907), Joseph Holbrooke (1905) and John Ireland (1907). Awards for a string quartet phantasy based on British folk songs (1916) and dance phantasy for piano and strings (1919) were won respectively by Herbert Howells and Armstrong Gibbs. Cobbett also commissioned phantasies from Bridge (piano quartet, 1910), Benjamin Dale (viola and piano, 1911), John McEwen (string quintet, 1911), Thomas Dunhill (piano, violin and viola, 1911), Vaughan Williams (string quintet, 1912) and others. Britten's Phantasy for oboe and strings (1932), though not written for a Cobbett competition, belongs in the same tradition.
‘British Chamber Music’, MT, lii (1911), 242–3 [report of a lecture by W.W. Cobbett]
E. Walker: ‘The Modern British Phantasy’, Music Student, viii (1915), suppl.17, pp.17–27; W.W. Cobbett: ‘Obiter dicta’, ibid., 27–31
‘Cobbett Competitions and Commissions’, ‘Phantasy’, Cobbett’s Cyclopedic Surrey of Chamber Music (London, 1929–30; enlarged 2/1963 /R by C. Mason), iii
CHRISTOPHER D.S. FIELD