Toccata

The toccata is a virtuoso keyboard composition built to display a player's touch and technique, characterised by free, improvisatory passages, rapid runs and alternating free and fugal sections. It flourished in the Baroque era in the hands of *Frescobaldi*, *Buxtehude* and *J.S. Bach*, whose "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565" remains the most famous example, and it survived as a Romantic and modern showpiece in works by *Schumann*, *Prokofiev* and *Khachaturian*. Though written chiefly for organ and harpsichord, the form later encompassed the piano and occasional adaptations for other forces.