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.

---

toccata British  

/ təˈkɑːtə /

noun

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

---

Etymology

Origin of toccata

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

Example Sentences

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 knock-em-dead toccata that ends the concerto represents a festive winter solstice gathering of Guarani ethnic groups who cover vast swaths of South America.

From Los Angeles Times • Oct. 11, 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

In this bright, fidgety orchestral version the music hovers somewhere between a perpetual-motion toccata and country-fiddle hoedown, though a pensive middle section alters the mood for a while.

From New York Times • Sep. 22, 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