Toccata

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Toccata

Toccata (from Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance languages spoken by about 63 million people as a first language, primarily in Italy. In Switzerland, Italian is one of four Linguistic geography of Switzerlands....
toccare, "to touch") is a virtuoso

Virtuoso

A virtuoso is an individual who possesses outstanding technical ability at singing or playing a musical instrument. The plural form is either virtuosi or the Anglicisation, virtuosos, and the feminine form sometimes used is virtuosa....
piece of music typically for a keyboard

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is any musical instrument played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include various types of organ s as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic musical instrument....
or plucked string instrument

Plucked string instrument

Plucked string instruments are a subcategory of string instruments that are played by plucking the string s. Plucking is a way of pulling and releasing the string in such as way as to give it an impulse that causes the string to vibrate....
featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a type of counterpoint composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of melody, normally referred to as "voices"....
interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Monteverdi

Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi , was an Italian composer, viol, and singer.Monteverdi's work, often regarded as revolutionary, marked the transition from the music of the Renaissance music to that of the Baroque music....
's opera Orfeo
Orfeo

L'Orfeo is one of the earliest works recognized as an opera, composed by Claudio Monteverdi with text by Alessandro Striggio for the annual carnival of Mantua....
being a notable example).

Renaissance
The form first appeared in the late Renaissance

Renaissance music

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Encyclopedia

Toccata (from Italian

Italian language

Virtuoso

Keyboard instrument

Plucked string instrument

Fugue

Claudio Monteverdi

History

Renaissance

The form first appeared in the late Renaissance

Renaissance music

Renaissance music is European music written during the Renaissance, approximately 1400 - 1600. Dates of classical music eras, given the lack of abrupt shifts in musical thinking during the 15th century....
period. It originated in northern Italy. Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Girolamo Diruta

Girolamo Diruta

Girolamo Diruta was an Italy organist, music theorist, and composer. He was famous as a teacher, for his treatise on counterpoint, and for his part in the development of keyboard technique, particularly on the organ ....
, Adriano Banchieri

Adriano Banchieri

Adriano Banchieri was an Italy composer, music theory, organ ist and poet of the late Renaissance music and early Baroque music eras. He founded the Accademia dei Floridi in Bologna....
, Claudio Merulo

Claudio Merulo

Claudio Merulo was an Italy composer, publisher and organist of the late Renaissance music period, most famous for his innovative keyboard music and his ensemble music composed in the Venetian polychoral style....
, Andrea

Andrea Gabrieli

Andrea Gabrieli was an Italy composer and organist of the late Renaissance music. The uncle of the somewhat more famous Giovanni Gabrieli, he was the first internationally renowned member of the Venetian School of composers, and was extremely influential in spreading the Venetian style in Italy as well as in Germany....
and Giovanni Gabrieli

Giovanni Gabrieli

Giovanni Gabrieli was an Italian composer and organ . He was one of the most influential musicians of his time, and represents the culmination of the style of the Venetian School, at the time of the shift from Renaissance music to Baroque music idioms....
, Luzzasco Luzzaschi

Luzzasco Luzzaschi

Luzzasco Luzzaschi was an Italy composer, organist, and teacher of the late Renaissance music. He was born and died in Ferrara, and probably spent his entire life there....
and others. These are keyboard compositions in which one hand, and then the other, performs virtuosic runs and brilliant cascading passages against a chordal accompaniment in the other hand. Among the composers working in Venice at this time was the young Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Hassler

Hans Leo Ha?ler was a German people composer and organ of the late Renaissance music and early Baroque music eras. He was born in Nuremberg and died in Frankfurt am Main....
, who studied with the Gabrielis; he brought the form back with him to Germany. It was in Germany where it underwent its highest development, culminating in the work of Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer and organ whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque music period and brought it to its ultimate maturity....
more than a hundred years later.

Baroque

The Baroque toccata, beginning with Girolamo Frescobaldi

Girolamo Frescobaldi

Girolamo Frescobaldi was an Italian musician, one of the most important composers of keyboard instrument music in the late Renaissance music and early Baroque music periods....
, is more sectional and increases 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. Often it features rapid runs and arpeggio

Arpeggio

In music, an arpeggio is a broken Chord where the notes are played or sung in sequence, one after the other, rather than ringing out simultaneously....
s alternating with chordal or fugal

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a type of counterpoint composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of melody, normally referred to as "voices"....
parts. Sometimes there is a lack of regular tempo, and almost always an improvisation

Improvisation

Improvisation is the practice of acting, singing, talking and reacting, of making and creating, in the moment and in response to the stimulus of one's immediate environment and inner feelings....
al feel.

Other Baroque composers of toccatas, in the period before Bach, include Johann Pachelbel

Johann Pachelbel

Johann Pachelbel was a German Baroque music composer, organist and teacher, who brought the German organ schools to its peak. He composed a large body of sacred and secular music, and his contributions to the development of the chorale prelude and fugue have earned him a place among the most important composers of the middle Baroque era....
, Michelangelo Rossi

Michelangelo Rossi

Michelangelo Rossi was an important Italian composer, violinist and organist of the Baroque era.Rossi was born in Genova, where he studied with his uncle, Lelio de Rubeis , at the Cathedral of San Lorenzo....
, Johann Jakob Froberger

Johann Jakob Froberger

Johann Jakob Froberger was a German people Baroque composer, Keyboard instrument virtuoso, and organist. He was among the most famous composers of the era and influenced practically every major composer in Europe by developing the genre of keyboard suite and contributing greatly to the exchange of musical traditions through his many travels....
, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck

Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck was a Netherlands composer, organist, and pedagogue whose work straddled the end of the Renaissance music and beginning of the Baroque music eras....
, Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti

Alessandro Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque music composer especially famous for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the founder of the Neapolitan school of opera....
and Dieterich Buxtehude

Dieterich Buxtehude

Dieterich Buxtehude was a German-Danish organist, lutenist and a highly regarded composer of the Baroque period. His organ works comprise a central part of the standard organ repertoire and are frequently performed at recitals and church services....
.

Bach's toccatas are among the most famous examples of the form, and his Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV

BWV

The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis is the numbering system identifying compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach. The prefix BWV, followed by the work's number now is the shorthand identification for Bach's compositions....
565 is one of the most popular organ works today, although its authorship is disputed by some authorities. His toccatas for organ are brilliant improvisatory compositions, and are often followed by an independent fugue

Fugue

In music, a fugue is a type of counterpoint composition or technique of composition for a fixed number of melody, normally referred to as "voices"....
movement. In such cases the toccata is used in place of the usually more stable prelude

Prelude (music)

A prelude is a short Musical piece of music, the form of which may vary from piece to piece. While, during the Baroque Age, for example, it may have served as an introduction to succeeding movements of a work that were usually longer and more complex, it may also have been a stand alone piece of work during the Romantic Era....
. Bach's toccatas for harpsichord are multi-sectional works which include fugal writing as part of their structure.

Post baroque

Beyond the Baroque period, toccatas are found less frequently. There are a few notable examples, however. From the Romantic period Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann

Robert Schumann, sometimes given as Robert Alexander Schumann, was a German composer, aesthete and influential music critic. He is one of the most famous Romantic music composers of the 19th century....
and Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt

Franz Liszt was a Kingdom of Hungary composer, virtuoso pianist and teacher.Liszt became renowned throughout Europe for his great skill as a performer during the 19th century....
each wrote a piano toccata - the ambitious Schumann piece being considered one of the most technically difficult works in the repertoire and the foremost representative of the genre in the 1800s. The Liszt toccata is a very short and austere composition from his late period, and is practically a toccata only by name. From the early 20th century Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer who mastered numerous musical genres and came to be admired as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century....
and Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian

Aram Khachaturian was a Soviet Union-Armenians composer whose works were often influenced by Armenian folk music....
each wrote a toccata for solo piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard instrument. Widely used in Western music for solo performance, ensemble use, chamber music, and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to musical composition and rehearsal....
, as did Maurice Ravel

Maurice Ravel

Joseph-Maurice Ravel was a French composer and pianist of Impressionist music known especially for the subtlety, richness, and poignancy of his melodies, orchestral and instrumental Texture and effects....
as part of Le Tombeau de Couperin
Le Tombeau de Couperin

Le Tombeau de Couperin is a suite for solo piano by Maurice Ravel, composed between 1914 and 1917, in six movements. Each movement is dedicated to the memory of friends of the composer who had died fighting in World War I....
and Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy

Achille-Claude Debussy was a French composer. Along with Maurice Ravel, he is considered one of the most prominent figures working within the field of Impressionist music, though he himself intensely disliked the term when applied to his compositions....
in his 'Suite: Pour le Piano'. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji

Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji was a Parsi people composer who lived in Britain. He was a music journalist and pianist.He occupies a curious place in the repertoire....
wrote several toccatas for solo piano. The toccata form was of great importance in the French romantic organ school, something of which Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens

Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens was an organist and composer for his instrument.He studied with Fran?ois-Joseph F?tis, who wanted to make him into a musician capable of renewing the organ-player's art in Belgium....
laid the foundation with his Fanfare. Toccatas in this style usually consist of rapid chord progressions combined with a powerful tune (often played in the pedal). The most famous examples are the ending movement of Charles-Marie Widor

Charles-Marie Widor

Charles-Marie Jean Albert Widor was a French organists, composer and teacher....
's Symphony No. 5
Symphony for Organ No. 5 (Widor)

The Organ Symphony No. 5 in f Minor was composed by Charles-Marie Widor in 1879 in music. It lasts for about thirty-five minutes....
, and the Finale of Louis Vierne

Louis Vierne

Louis Victor Jules Vierne was a renowned French organ ist and composer. He was born October 8, 1870 in Poitiers and died June 2, 1937 in Paris....
's Symphony No. 1. More recently, John Rutter

John Rutter

John Milford Rutter Order of the British Empire is an England composer, choir conducting, editing, arranger and record producer.Born in London, he was educated at Highgate School, where a fellow pupil was John Tavener....
wrote Toccata in 7, so called because of its unusual time signature. Toccatas occasionally make appearances in works for full orchestra

Orchestra

An orchestra is an Musical ensemble, usually fairly large with string, brass, woodwind sections, and possibly a percussion section as well. The term orchestra derives from the name for the area in front of an theatre of ancient Greece reserved for the Greek chorus....
; a notable example is the final movement of the Eighth Symphony

Symphony No. 8 (Vaughan Williams)

Ralph Vaughan Williams' Symphony No. 8 in D minor was composed between 1953 and 1955. John Barbirolli conducted the premiere of the piece in 1956....
of Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Ralph Vaughan Williams Order of Merit was an England composer of symphony, chamber music, opera, choral music, and film Film score. He was also a collector of England folk music and folk song; this also influenced his editorial approach to the English Hymnal, which began in 1904, many folk song arrangements being set as hymn tunes,...
.

Literature

Robert Browning

Robert Browning was an English poet and playwright whose mastery of dramatic verse, especially dramatic monologues, made him one of the foremost Victorian literature poets....
used the motif or concept of a toccata by Baldassare Galuppi to evoke thoughts of human transience in his poem "A Toccata of Galuppi's

A Toccata of Galuppi's

"A Toccata of Galuppi's" is a poem by Robert Browning, originally publishing in the 1855 collection Men and Women . The title refers to the fact that the speaker is either playing or listening to a toccata by the Venice composer Baldassarre Galuppi, although in fact Galuppi did not write any piece of music called toccata....
" (although Galuppi did not actually write any piece with the name 'Toccata').

Media

External links

e-text

Toccata

History

Renaissance

Baroque

Post baroque

Literature

Media

See also

External links