Explore: the toccata
The term Toccata, or "touch piece", denotes a virtuosic and exciting 'tour de force' for both composers and performers. Normally written for a solo keyboard instrument (harpsichord, piano or organ), in the Baroque period it often highlighted the alternation of slow, emphatic chordal passages with rapid, improvisatory scale figurations. From the Classical era onwards it tended to be monothematic and motoric in character.
Read more…It is not surprising that the composers of the greatest Toccatas have as a rule themselves been virtuoso performers. Charles-Marie Widor, who recorded his own organ Toccata at the age of 88, would no doubt be amazed how ubiquitous it has become as a concluding voluntary at wedding services. And just in case focussing on digital dexterity and rhythmic energy should seem too unrelenting, composers from Bach onwards have often appended a fugue to their toccatas: from a soft beginning, a single theme gives rise to elaborate contrapuntal textures leading up to an overwhelming peroration. In our own era, Sofia Gubaidulina in her 'Toccata-troncata' has "deconstructed" the toccata genre by never allowing momentum to accumulate, but interrupting it repeatedly with long pauses.