op.26 and F op.54.(It., from toccare: ‘to touch’).
A piece intended primarily as a display of manual dexterity, often free in form and almost always for a solo keyboard instrument. The toccata principle is found in many works not so called, and a large number of pieces labelled ‘toccata’ incorporate other more rigorous styles (such as fugue) or forms (such as sonata form). In the 16th and 17th centuries the term was sometimes applied to fanfare-like pieces (e.g. the opening fanfare of Monteverdi’s Orfeo, 1607), but the origin of this usage and its relationship to the current one are obscure. (For the putative connection with the Shakespearean ‘tucket’, see Tuck, tucket).
Freely composed keyboard music, independent of the dance, of cantus firmi or of any vocal model, first appeared in certain 15th-century German manuscripts, such as the tablature of Adam Ileborgh and the Buxheimer Orgelbuch. Here sequences of chords alternate with somewhat aimless scale passages, and the usual title is ‘praeludium’ or ‘preambulum’. The style was continued in the early 16th century, in the tablatures of Kotter, Kleber and others (see Prelude). At the same time a rhapsodic form known as the ricercare appeared in Italy, at first in collections of lute music and then in the Recerchari, motetti, canzoni (1523) for keyboard of M.A. Cavazzoni. The two ricercares in his collection serve as introductions to transcriptions of motets and are long, somewhat rambling pieces. But by 1543, when his son Girolamo Cavazzoni’s first collection of keyboard pieces appeared, the term ‘ricercare’ had been transferred to a piece of fugal character (see Ricercare). The early lute publications also included the term Tastar de corde (i.e. a testing of the strings; see also Tiento), usually referring to a more strictly chordal type of piece. The Spanish equivalent, ‘tañer’, was used in a more general sense, as in Tomás de Santa Maria’s Libro llamado Arte de tañer fantasia (1565), where it simply means the art of playing fantasias.
The earliest appearance in print of the word ‘toccata’ is found in G.A. Casteliono’s Intabolatura de leuto de diversi autori (1536), from which the terms ‘tastar de corde’ and ‘recercare’ had disappeared. One of the three pieces here entitled ‘Tochata’ is by Francesco da Milano. The earliest printed keyboard toccatas are those of Sperindio Bertoldo (1591), but more significant are those in the first volume of Diruta’s Il transilvano (1593), including toccatas by Diruta himself, Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Luzzaschi, Antonio Romanini, Paolo Quagliati, Vincenzo Bellavere and Gioseffo Guami; other important collections are the Intonationi d’organo of the Gabrielis (1593), containing four toccatas by Andrea Gabrieli, Merulo’s two volumes of Toccate d’intavolatura d’organo (1598 and 1604) and Annibale Padovano’s Toccate et ricercari d’organo (1604). Most of these works are in a predominantly chordal style in which either hand may perform brilliant runs against chords in the other. Merulo was the most ambitious of these composers, and his rhythmic figuration begins to approach the nervous intensity of Frescobaldi’s. His toccatas are more sectional, too, fugal and chordal passages alternating with brilliant passage-work. Toccatas were also composed by Banchieri, Mayone, Trabaci and others.
With Frescobaldi a new era was inaugurated; by the time his first book of toccatas appeared (in 1615) the contrasts had become more violent, the passage-work more rhythmically complex. The 12th toccata in that book is an essay in chromaticism with little in the way of passage-work. The second book (1627) includes two lengthy toccatas for the Elevation, two that may be performed over long pedal notes, a toccata ‘di durezze e ligature’ (no.8, featuring suspended dissonances; see illustration), and, as the 12th work, Arcadelt’s madrigal Ancidetemi pur arranged for keyboard with toccata-like figuration. The effect of rhythmic discontinuity is most pronounced in the ninth toccata, in which the use of complex rhythmic proportions led the composer to remark ‘the end is not reached without fatigue’. There are also short introductory and Elevation toccatas in his Fiori musicali (1635): the former served as a substitute for the introit of the Mass, a function confirmed in a number of contemporary sources.
The legacy of Frescobaldi lasted until the end of the century in Italy. Michelangelo Rossi’s toccatas are, if anything, even more extravagant than Frescobaldi’s, especially harmonically. Bernardo Pasquini wrote a large number of pieces entitled variously ‘toccata’, ‘tastata’, ‘sonata’ and, in one instance, ‘preludio’; their keyboard figuration is more varied than that in Rossi’s toccatas, but there is greater continuity, and the later Baroque style is foreshadowed. As in one of Rossi’s toccatas, there is occasionally a completely contrasted section in triple time. Another Italian mid-Baroque composer of toccatas was Domenico Zipoli.
One of the first south German composers to cultivate the toccata was H.L. Hassler, who had studied with Andrea Gabrieli in Venice. Frescobaldi’s style of toccata was transmitted to Austria by Froberger; his 24 or so toccatas are even more sectional than Frescobaldi’s but at the same time have greater continuity within each section. They contain some fugato, and to a certain extent Froberger transferred to them the principle of the variation canzona or capriccio. A typical one consists of a fairly lengthy rhapsodic introduction, a fugato, a second fugato based on a rhythmic transformation of the material of the first, and a shorter free passage to conclude; but the scheme was not set in stone, and there is considerable variety among the pieces.
The rhapsodic element in Froberger’s style was passed on to the French through transcriptions of some of his toccatas, resulting in the typical French unmeasured prelude (see Prélude non mesuré); but the French did not adopt the title ‘toccata’ at this period. The Austrian and south German tradition, continued by such composers as Kerll and S.A. Scherer, culminated in the work of Georg Muffat, whose Apparatus musico-organisticus (1690) is a landmark in the history of organ music; its 12 toccatas are extravagant but controlled, divided into several contrasting sections but totally unified in style. The pedals are obbligato, but their simple parts consist of little more than held notes at unison pitch; occasionally they are required to double or fill in a manual bass line (pedal writing was to develop no further in Roman Catholic countries for another 150 years). Something of Muffat’s grandeur appears in the rather shorter toccatas of Johann Speth’s Ars magna consoni et dissoni (1693). Johann Pachelbel’s toccatas are single-section works consisting of florid passage-work over held pedal notes; those of Muffat’s son Gottlieb are merely short introductory movements to a series of liturgical suites that consist otherwise of fugues and are arranged according to key. The works of harpsichord composers such as J.J. Fux and J.C.F. Fischer, though they include toccata-like movements, do not use the title.
In the Netherlands the toccata was developed by Sweelinck before it had been transformed by Frescobaldi. Indeed his toccatas lack even the modest degree of rhythmic freedom implied by the style of Merulo, and his immediate models were no doubt the toccatas of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli. A few melodic similarities between his toccatas and Merulo’s have been detected, but the chief characteristic of Sweelinck’s is their rhythmic regularity.
Of all the forms bequeathed by Sweelinck to his north European successors, the toccata was the least important. There is a single toccata by his contemporary Peeter Cornet, who was at the Roman Catholic court of Brussels. The toccatas surviving in manuscript by Samuel Scheidt are not of great interest, and Heinrich Scheidemann wrote only two (the Germans were more concerned with the chorale and the fugue). More significant is the single toccata of Delphin Strungk (D-Lr KN209), a large work exploiting contrast between the two manuals and showing the beginnings of a development pursued in the toccatas of Weckmann, Reincken and finally Buxtehude; its chief elements are the increasing stylistic distinction between the organ and the harpsichord toccata, the former cultivating the tonal possibilities of the organ and using the pedals in the elaborate manner of the north German organists, and the increasing use of fugue. With Buxtehude the toccata became a large-scale work in which rhapsodic and fugal sections alternated, the whole composition being unified in style and to a certain extent in thematic substance. This mirrors the development reached independently by Froberger, and it is not unlikely that Buxtehude was influenced by it, the more so, perhaps, after the publication of Froberger’s toccatas in 1693. In Buxtehude and his contemporaries, however, works of this kind may also be called ‘praeludium’ or ‘preambulum’ in the sources.
In Italy Alessandro Scarlatti’s toccatas were a radically new departure. They are for harpsichord and may be in as many as six or seven contrasting sections, incorporating such elements as fugue, recitative and variations: for example, no.7 (of Primo e secondo libro di toccate, 1723) ends with 29 variations on the folia. Scarlatti influenced Handel’s keyboard style, but Handel wrote no toccatas so called. Scarlatti’s influence is also to be seen in a few of J.S. Bach’s works, such as the Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, but Bach’s harpsichord toccatas are large-scale works of individual design, incorporating at least one and sometimes two fugal movements. Rhapsodic figuration is subordinated to passages in regular rhythm, and these are tightly knit works in spite of their imposing designs. In the first movement of the E minor Partita the form consists of introductory toccata material, an extended fugue, and a return of the first section.
Bach’s organ toccatas are either works in which the toccata and fugal elements are closely linked, as with Buxtehude (e.g. the Toccata, often called Toccata and Fugue, in D minor bwv565 and the Toccata in C bwv564, which incorporates an introduction, adagio and fugue); or they are large independent movements in strict rhythm preceding a fugue (e.g. the ‘Dorian’ Toccata and Fugue bwv538 or the Toccata and Fugue in F bwv540). The justification for the title here is the largely continuous semiquaver movement, by means of which the tension is built up; this was to become a cardinal feature of the modern toccata, the rhapsodic and fugal elements being almost entirely abandoned.
The
toccata was hardly used in the Classical period, and since then its use has
been considerably limited as a result of its somewhat indefinable character.
Its characteristics of display are found in such forms as the exercise and
study, while its rhythmic and formal freedom are embodied in the capriccio and
rhapsody. Its one more or less stable characteristic, that of continuous
movement in short note values, is shared with the moto perpetuo as well
as with numerous works and movements that have no special title. Among
classical movements that in later times might well have borne the title are the
finales of Beethoven’s sonatas in A op.26 and F op.54.
The title ‘toccata’ was occasionally used by 18th-century Italian composers. There is a famous one by Muzio Clementi (published with a sonata as op.11, 1784), which he played at his competition with Mozart before the Emperor Joseph II in 1781; it has rapid 3rds in the right hand. In 1820 F.G. Pollini brought out his Trentadue esercizi in forma di toccata, fundamentally exercises in piano touch. Schumann’s magnificent Toccata in C op.7 probably owes more in form and spirit to the Beethoven finales mentioned above than to these Italian examples. It is in sonata form with a fairly short exposition and a lengthy development section, all in the context of a technically demanding moto perpetuo.
The title was adopted by some French organists of the late 19th century and early 20th for the brilliant finales of their organ symphonies; those by Widor and Vierne are well known. The style is also found in movements entitled ‘sortie’ or ‘final’. The curious little piece that Berlioz composed for the reed organ in 1845 is a toccata in name only.
On the whole the piano has inspired more interesting examples of the toccata in the 20th century. The form was revived by Debussy in his suite Pour le piano and by Ravel in Le tombeau de Couperin. In both cases the object was to provide a quasi-archaic element, though an anachronistic one; both pieces are finales in their respective suites and both are in 2/4 time with continuous semiquaver movement. The type is a cross between the Schumann example and the organists’ toccata. On the whole the Debussy work is the more inventive and varied of the two, though Ravel’s, with its gradually approached climax, has the subtler form. There is also the fine Toccata op.11 by Prokofiev (1912). The toccata has not been much cultivated by English composers, but a striking example is the first movement of Vaughan Williams’s Concerto for piano and orchestra (1933; revised for two pianos and orchestra, 1946). The massive and difficult piano writing and the largely continuous semiquaver movement, neither of them characteristic of the composer, justify the title.
ApelG
L. Schrade: ‘Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Tokkata’, ZMw, viii (1925–6), 610–35
L. Schrade: Die ältesten Denkmäler der Orgelmusik als Beitrag zu einer Geschichte der Toccata (Münster, 1928)
E. Valentin: Die Entwicklung der Tokkata im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert (bis J.S. Bach) (Münster, 1930)
O. Gombosi: ‘Zur Vorgeschichte der Tokkata’, AcM, vi (1934), 49–53
S. Clercx-Lejeune: ‘La toccata, principe du style symphonique’, La musique instrumentale de la Renaissance: Paris 1954, 313–26
H. Hering: ‘Das Tokkatische’, Mf, vii (1954), 277–94
E. Valentin, ed.: Die Tokkata, Mw, xvii (1958; Eng. trans., 1958) [incl. music]
M.C. Bradshaw: The Origin of the Toccata, MSD, xxviii (1972)
M.C. Bradshaw: ‘Tonal Design in the Venetian Intonation and Toccata’, MR, xxv (1974), 101–19
M.C. Bradshaw: ‘The Toccatas of Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck’, TVNM, xxv/2 (1975), 38–60
A. Silbiger: Italian Manuscript Sources of Seventeenth-Century Keyboard Music (Ann Arbor, 1980)
A. Silbiger: ‘The Roman Frescobaldi Tradition, c. 1640–1670’, JAMS, xxxiii (1980), 42–87
J. Dehuel: Toccata und Präludium in der Orgelmusik von Merulo bis Bach (Kassel, 1989)
S.C. Perry: The Development of the Italian Organ Toccata, 1550–1750 (diss., U. of Kentucky, 1990)
JOHN CALDWELL