As with much of Elizabethan England's artistic culture, some roots may be traced to Italian precedents. The works bearing the name fantasia by the "divine" Francesco da Milano, works for lute that showcase the performer's skill at elaborating a basic theme in plucked polyphony, were already circulating in England by the time Alonso Ferrabosco crested the Italophile wave into Elizabeth's court in 1562. Ferrabosco and his English cohort Antony Holborne both contributed to the genre in England. Yet the most outstanding English lute fantasias would wait for the pen of John Dowland, some years after the genre's heyday at court. And it would be Dowland who would take the fantasia to a new level, transforming the more staid and "learned" contrapuntal exposition into an exuberant and multisectional tour de force of a lutenist's ability and imagination. In Dowland's lute fantasias, both the instrument and the player may be stretched to new levels.

Dowland's Fantasia No. 7 may not be the most technical, but it is the longest of his securely attributed lute fantasias. Over the course of its four or five minutes in performance, the performer has the opportunity to demonstrate facility in a large number of different musical textures and techniques. The opening exposes two principal ideas, a ground consisting of mostly repeated notes and a memorable and active countermelody. After the two have exchanged roles, a brief cadential passage punctuated by dotted rhythms ensues, and the foundations of the fantasia have been laid. Much of the remaining music follows or adapts these basic musical materials: we encounter passages in which a two-voiced texture elaborates an ornamented line that repeats some notes, and passages involving a more imitative texture following the first contrapuntal melody, and passages that riff upon the dotted-note motif and its rhythmic interest. The conclusion of this lengthy fantasia shifts rhythmic meters twice and brings the virtuosic complexity of the inner voices to a peak of difficulty.

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