(after It. toccare: ‘to touch’, and toccata: ‘a touching’).
To draw sound from an instrument; by extension, the music played. In Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight (GB-Lbl Cotton Nero A.x, lines 118–20; c1360) ‘towches’ describes the playing of nakers, pipes and lute. In The Merchant of Venice (Act 5 scene i; 1595) Lorenzo commands Jessica’s musicians ‘With sweetest tutches pearce your Mistresse eare, and draw her home with musicke’. More explicit is the passage from Massinger’s The Guardian (Act 2 scene iv; 1655) in which Severino’s ‘I’ll touch my horn, they know my call’ is followed by the stage direction ‘blows his horn’.
A prelude ascribed both to Byrd (GB-Lbl Add.30413) and to Gibbons (F-Pc Rés.1186) is called ‘A Toutch’ in the British Library copy, and a late use of the term is found applied to several florid passages for keyboard dated 1782 headed ‘Mr Kelway’s touches’ (GB-Lcm 2097); the music may be by Joseph Kelway, a pupil of Geminiani and champion in England of Scarlatti’s keyboard music.
DAVID SCOTT