Georg Philipp Telemann’s collection of12 Fantasias for Solo Violin, TWV 40:14–25, was published in Hamburg in 1735. It is one of Telemann’s collections of music for unaccompanied instruments, the others being twelve fantasias for solo flute and thirty-six for solo harpsichord that were published in Hamburg in 1732–33, as well as a set of twelve fantasias for solo viola da gamba that was published in the same city in 1735, but were considered lost until a copy of the print was found in a private collection in 2015 by viola da gamba player and musicologist Thomas Fritzsch.^[1]

This collection consists of the following works:

This scheme does not resemble that of the twelve flute fantasies, which progress in a roughly stepwise direction from A major to G minor.^[2]However, some overall structure seems to be implied: the first movement of Fantasia 7 subtly references the opening of the first fantasia in the collection, indicating that Telemann possibly conceived this work as two groups of 6 fantasias. He has, indeed, described the collection as “12 fantasias … of which 6 include fugues and 6 are Galanterien”, with “fugues” referencing the contrapuntal style of certain fantasias.^[3]

Telemann’s violin fantasias exhibit mastery of not only compound melodic lines, but also of idiomatic writing for violin,^[4]as Telemann himself was a self-taught violinist. Much of the music reveals the influence of Italian sonatas and concertos, but the typical tendency of German solo violin music to rely on polyphony is still present:^[5]fantasias 2, 3, 5, 6, and 10 all include fugues and employ much double-stopping.