12 Fantasias for Solo Flute


Georg Philipp Telemann's 12 fantaisies à traversière sans basse, 12 Fantasias for Solo Flute, TWV 40:2–13, were published in Hamburg in 1732–33. An extant copy of the publication, conserved in Brussels, has a spurious title page reading Fantasie per il Violino senza Basso. The set is one of Telemann's collections of fantasias for unaccompanied instruments, the others being a set of, also published in 1732–33, and two sets published in 1735: twelve for solo violin and twelve for viola da gamba.
Telemann's solo flute fantasias are alone in the Baroque repertoire to include movements seemingly impossible on flute: fugues, a French overture and a passacaglia. In 2012, an arrangement for viola solo was published by Euprint. In this arrangement, through the use of double stops, some many-voiced parts appear as real polyphonic pieces.

Structure

This work comprises the following:
  1. Fantasia in A major
  2. Fantasia in A minor
  3. Fantasia in B minor
  4. Fantasia in B-flat major
  5. Fantasia in C major
  6. Fantasia in D minor
  7. Fantasia in D major
  8. Fantasia in E minor
  9. Fantasia in E major
  10. Fantasia in F-sharp minor
  11. Fantasia in G major
  12. Fantasia in G minor
The collection is arranged by key, progressing more or less stepwise from A major to G minor. Telemann deliberately avoided keys that are impractical on the one-key flute, i.e. B major, C minor, F minor and F-sharp major. There are two ways to view the overall structure of the collection: one way, in which the work is divided into two parts, is suggested by the fact that Fantasia 7 begins with a French overture, indicating a start of a new section. This device was also later used by Johann Sebastian Bach in Variation 16 of his Goldberg Variations. Another was proposed by scholar Wolfgang Hirschmann: there are four modal groups of three fantasias: major-minor-minor, major-major-minor, major-minor-major, and minor-major-minor.