toccata

American  

[tuh-kah-tuh, tawk-kah-tah] / təˈkɑ tə, tɔkˈkɑ tɑ /

noun

Music.

toccatas, plural toccate plural

1. a composition in the style of an improvisation, for the piano, organ, or other keyboard instrument, intended to exhibit the player's technique.

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toccata British  

/ təˈkɑːtə /

noun

1. a rapid keyboard composition for organ, harpsichord, etc, dating from the baroque period, usually in a rhythmically free style

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Other Word Forms

Noun Inflected Forms

• toccatas
  plural
• toccate
  plural

Etymology

Origin of toccata

1715–25; < Italian: “touched,” feminine past participle of toccare touch

Example Sentences

See Examples For:

toccata toccatas

On TikTok, Lapwood does get the occasional negative comment — such as a poster complaining about the expressively fluctuating tempo in her performance of a Bach toccata.

From New York Times ● Dec. 21, 2022

“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 Sweelinck pieces, a toccata and the “Fantasia chromatica,” were luminous, their wandering into distant keys tastefully pointed up, but unmistakable.

From Washington Post ● Jan. 15, 2017

But Wang's encore was sizzlingly special, a delightful jazzy toccata with a minimalist streak and an irresistible boogie down the stretch called "You Come Here Often?"

From Los Angeles Times ● Mar. 25, 2015

They seize in their hands a gong to which they give repeated blows with the third finger, snapping it with the thumb, thus making a kind of toccata with it.

From The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 Explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century, Volume XLIII, 1670-1700 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 wearied my soul with a lot of ugly gloomy toccatas and fugues.

From The Serapion Brethren, Vol. I. by Hoffmann, Ernst Theodor Wilhelm