toccata

American  

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

noun

Music.

plural

toccatas, toccate

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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Etymology

Origin of toccata

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

Example Sentences

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

J. Reilly Lewis will lead the ensemble and organist Todd Fickley in a cantata, toccata and fugue.

From Washington Post • Apr. 29, 2016

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