Toccata Toccata Toccata (from Italian "toccare", literally, "to touch") is a virtuoso piece of music typically for a keyboard or plucked string instrument featuring fast-moving, lightly fingered or otherwise virtuosic passages or sections, with or without imitative or fugal interludes, generally emphasizing the dexterity of the performer's fingers. Less frequently, the name is applied to works for multiple instruments (the opening of Claudio Monteverdi's opera "L'Orfeo" being a notable example). The form first appeared in the late Renaissance period. It originated in northern Italy. Several publications of the 1590s include toccatas, by composers such as Claudio Merulo, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli,
Toccata le Piano" and also "Jardins sous la pluie" (which is a toccata but not in name), and York Bowen's Toccata Op. 155. Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji wrote four toccatas for solo piano, while Moises Moleiro wrote two. George Enescu's Piano Suite No. 2, Op. 10, opens with a toccata. The first movement of Benjamin Britten's Piano Concerto is a toccata, as is the first movement of Nikolai Medtner's 2nd piano concerto. The toccata form was of great importance in the French romantic organ school, something of which Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens laid the foundation with his "Fanfare". Toccatas in this style usually consist