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Fantastic, free in invention.
Printed above the staff, usually after a tempo word (Allegro fantastico), at the start of the passage; it lasts until the next tempo or character word.
Fantastic in the older sense — imaginative, capricious, unpredictable. It invites freedom of tempo and colour, quick changes of mood and a touch of the uncanny. It works best where the writing itself shifts without warning; over regular, predictable music the word promises something the notes do not deliver.
Scriabin, Piano Sonata No. 5, Op. 53, m. 140: “Allegro fantastico”, with “molto accel.” and “cresc.” in the same bar, right after a “molto rall.”
Fantastico is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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