Toccata

Toccata, musical composition for a keyboard instrument, usually the harpsichord or organ. Dating from the 16th century, the toccata is frequently a display piece exploiting the skill of the keyboard player; it originally allowed for much improvisation. Generally it begins with full chords that give way to fast virtuoso or rhapsodic passages among which small fugato (fuguelike) sections are interspersed. Important composers of toccatas include the Italian Girolamo Frescobaldi and the Germans Dietrich Buxtehude and Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach's best-known toccata is the Toccata in D minor for organ. A 20th-century example is the Toccata, op. 2 (1912), by the Russian composer Sergey Prokofiev.