The genre of the instrumental fantasia had been long popular in Elizabethan England. Lute works by Italian Francesco da Milano were widely disseminated among the Italophile English nobility, and Alonso Ferrabosco contributed to the form while he resided at court. But by the time of John Dowland, these rhapsodic and often severe variation sets were falling from favor, to be replaced by a new craze for pavans, galliards, and other courtly dance solos. Dowland, in fact, was one of few Elizabethan composers to continue writing fantasias into the 1590s. And write he did, investing a great deal of compositional effort—and obvious skill!—in the genre. In Dowland's hands, an almost moribund genre took on new life for a moment, offering an excellent platform for displays of virtuosity. Perhaps his best-known, and well-traveled, effort in the genre of the fantasia is his one in G major.

Dowland's G major Fantasia may begin conventionally, but almost immediately subverts the same conventions to which it refers. The genre often had been treated as an extended contrapuntal exercise upon a single motive; Dowland opens with an extremely clear "point" of three-voiced imitation upon a motive, which leads to a conventional cadence. Immediately following, he begins another "point," slightly varying the rhythm of the motive, changing the interval of voice entry, and harmonically digressing to the surprising sonority of B major. The third imitation continues on his path away from convention, barely echoing an inversion of the first motive, and drawing out the cadential approach to great lengths. From here, the composer goes further and further from his original clear beginning, deriving an astounding number of diverse musical textures from the same single instrument and from the echoes of his first motive: imitative suspensions, running passagework, more chordal antiphony, battle-like triadic sequences, a quasi-ostinato passage, and a virtuosic treble solo above simple bass notes. And still he has not exhausted his arsenal! A syncopated sequence that in lesser hands may have merely ornamented the last cadence leads to a gigue-like triple-meter passage and even an inversion of the prior "solo," with the virtuosic passage in the lowest voice. A final flourish of repeated cadential chords leaves the listener breathless at the spectacle.

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