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,
Musical language Musical language Musical languages are constructed languages based on musical sounds, which tend to incorporate articulation. Unlike tonal languages and whistled languages where pitches and length are both undefined and not as important as to how a tone is stressed or bent, musical languages distinguish pitches and how the pitches are accented or shifted. Whistled languages are dependent on an underlying spoken languages and are used in various cultures as a means for communication over distance, or as secret codes. The mystical concept of a language of the birds tries to connect the two categories, since some authors of musical