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 (Khachaturian) Toccata (Khachaturian) The Toccata in E-flat minor is a piece for solo piano written in 1932 by Aram Khachaturian. It is a favorite of piano students, and has been recorded many times. Khachaturian wrote this work as the first movement of a three-movement suite for piano: He wrote the suite in 1932 while studying at the Moscow Conservatory under Nikolai Myaskovsky. However, the Toccata became so well known so quickly that it is now considered a separate piece; the suite from which it came is little known. The first performance was given by then-classmate Lev Oborin, who also recorded it.