Toccata

Toccata (from Italian toccare, literally, "to touch", with "toccata" being the action of touching) is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers.

Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Adriano Banchieri, and Luzzasco Luzzaschi.

Among the composers working in Venice at this time was the young Hans Leo Hassler, who studied with the Gabrielis; he brought the form back with him to Germany.

The Baroque toccata, beginning with Girolamo Frescobaldi, is more sectional and increased in length, intensity and virtuosity from the Renaissance version, reaching heights of extravagance equivalent to the overwhelming detail seen in the architecture of the period.

Bach's toccatas for harpsichord BWV 910-916 are multi-sectional works which include fugal writing, rhetorical flourishes, recitative, and aria-like movements as part of their structure.

Schumann's ambitious Toccata in C major is considered one of the most technically difficult works in the repertoire and the foremost representative of the genre in the 1800s.

The first piece, "Sévère réprimande" (Severe Reprimand), of Erik Satie's 1912 composition Veritables Preludes flasques (pour un chien) is a toccata.

The same composer's earlier cycle Steps Volume 1: An anthology includes a toccata movement called A Touch, with reference to the Italian verb toccare.

The toccata form was of great importance in the French romantic organ school, something of which Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens laid the foundation with his Fanfare.

Toccatas occasionally make appearances in works for full orchestra; a notable example is the final movement of the Eighth Symphony of Ralph Vaughan Williams.