toccata
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of toccata
1715–25; < Italian: “touched,” feminine past participle of toccare touch
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In the middle of one conversation, the architect suddenly popped out of his chair, walked over to a Steinway and started to play a Bach toccata.
From New York Times ● Mar. 7, 2023
Here it was clear in its hovering veils of sound, its quietly lyrical serenity and its toccata flurries, before a steady, triumphal ending.
From New York Times ● Jun. 8, 2022
Adams joked in a conversation with the pianist Sarah Cahill before the premiere that “I Still Dance” is really a toccata with a disco beat.
From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 20, 2019
“The BBC would come by and see what’s going on with the student body. I’d written a toccata in the style of Khachaturian, and they said, ‘Oh really?
From The New Yorker ● May 3, 2017
The same grasp of all the possible meanings of an artistic device shows itself in his treatment of the other features of toccata form.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" by Various
Nodding to the keyboard toccatas of Bach’s father, the piece is like a spiraling stream of notes, tossed between the hands.
From New York Times ● Mar. 26, 2020
Worse, they lead you to hope for thrilling toccatas and fugues when all you get from Bill Frisell’s music is misty watercolor pop.
From New York Times ● Apr. 26, 2018
In the Baroque perfection of his preludes, fugues, toccatas and fantasias, she said, one could find the order that is not always visible in the melee of human life.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 28, 2017
Alison Chitty's bullring-inspired designs, opening with video of a slow-churning black sea which also accompanies the orchestral interludes, called toccatas, retains its raw grandeur.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 20, 2013
He taught me counterpoint with untiring, indefatigable pains and zeal, and ere long I was able to write the correctest of fugues and toccatas.
From The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
