Musical Form
Toccata
A "touch piece" that shows off the player's fingers - from Bach's organ to Prokofiev's piano.
Solo / Keyboard
A toccata is a brilliant, virtuosic piece, usually for a keyboard instrument, designed to show off the player's speed and dexterity. The name comes from the Italian toccare, "to touch," and that is the idea: a toccata is a piece about the touch of the fingers on the keys, full of rushing scales, flashing chords, and dramatic contrasts.
Origins: improvising at the keyboard
The toccata grew up in 16th-century Italy, especially in Venice, as a free, improvisatory piece for organ or harpsichord. Organists played toccatas to test an instrument, to set the pitch for singers, or to fill time during a church service, and the music sounds spontaneous: bursts of fast passagework, sudden pauses, and sustained chords, without a fixed form or steady theme.
In the early 17th century the Roman organist Girolamo Frescobaldi made the toccata an art form, writing pieces full of changing moods and asking players to shape the tempo freely, "as in modern madrigals." North German organists, especially Dieterich Buxtehude, combined free toccata sections with strict fugues, creating the dramatic pairing that Bach would make famous.
Bach's toccatas
Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor for organ is perhaps the most famous organ piece ever written, with its spine-tingling opening flourish and thundering chords. It has appeared everywhere from horror films to Disney's Fantasia, though some scholars doubt it is really by Bach. He also wrote seven toccatas for harpsichord, which alternate free, rhapsodic passages with fugues.
The toccata after Bach
After the Baroque, the word came to mean a fast, relentless showpiece built on continuous rapid motion, like a perpetual motion machine. Some of the most spectacular examples are by French organists, whose toccatas pound out a grand theme in the pedals beneath a whirlwind of chords, and they have become favorite wedding recessionals. Pianists have their own toccatas, from Schumann's fiendish Toccata in C major to the percussive modern showpieces of Prokofiev and Ravel.
Famous toccatas
- Bach - Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, for organ.
- Charles-Marie Widor - Toccata from Organ Symphony No. 5 - the great wedding favorite.
- Léon Boëllmann - Toccata from the Suite gothique for organ.
- Schumann - Toccata in C major, Op. 7, for piano.
- Ravel - Toccata from Le Tombeau de Couperin, a glittering finale.
- Prokofiev - Toccata in D minor, Op. 11, a hammering, mechanical piano showpiece.
- Frescobaldi - Toccatas for harpsichord or organ, from his books of 1615 and 1627.
Where to start listening: Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on a big organ, then Widor's Toccata - five minutes of sheer exhilaration. For the piano, try Ravel's Toccata. See also the harpsichord and the prelude, a close cousin.