A chromatic fantasia is a specific type of fantasia

Fantasia (music)

The fantasia is a musical composition with its roots in the art of improvisation. Because of this, it seldom approximates the textbook rules of any strict musical form ....

 (or fantasy or fancy) originating in sixteenth century Europe. In its earliest form, it is based on a chromatically descending tetrachord

Descending tetrachord

In music theory, the descending tetrachord is a series of four notes from a scale, or tetrachord, arranged in order from highest to lowest, or descending order. For example --- , as created by the Andalusian cadence. The descending tetrachord may fill a perfect fourth or a chromatic...

 which arises naturally out of the dorian mode

Dorian mode

Due to historical confusion, Dorian mode or Doric mode can refer to three very different musical modes or diatonic scales, the Greek, the medieval, and the modern.- Greek Dorian mode :...

. Consequently the chromatic fantasia is almost invariably in D minor

D minor

D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. In the harmonic minor, the C is raised to C. Its key signature has one flat ....

 (D-E-F-G-A-B-C rather than D-E-F-G-A-B-C) even as late as Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

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Some Early Examples

Among the earliest examples are two celebrated lute pieces by John Dowland

John Dowland

John Dowland was an English Renaissance composer, singer, and lutenist. He is best known today for his melancholy songs such as "Come, heavy sleep" , "Come again", "Flow my tears", "I saw my Lady weepe" and "In darkness let me dwell", but his instrumental music has undergone a major revival, and has...

, the Farewell and Forlorn Hope Fancy. These were obviously highly influential of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a Dutch composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. He was among the first major keyboard composers of Europe, and his work as a teacher helped establish the north German organ...

 whose own Fantasia Chromatica in many ways forms a link between the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 and the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

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Bach's chromatic fantasia

The chromatic fantasy, as a form, fell into neglect in the later seventeenth century.
About a century after Sweelinck, J. S. Bach contributed the most famous of examples of the form.