This week, as promised, we returned to that flexible, flighty genre: the toccata! Last month, in Musical Gymnastics Part 1, we heard some classic examples of the genre. This week, the Ether Game Brain Trust presented nine unusual and curious toccate in Musical Gymnastics Part 2. 

Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) L'Orfeo: Toccata d'Overture  Although the birthplace of opera has been credited to the Italian city of Florence in 1600, with settings of the story of Orpheus and Euridice by composers Jacopo Peri and Giulio Caccini standing as the first monuments of operatic history, it was the city of Mantua that became the new center for opera in 1607.  It was in that year that court composer Claudio Monteverdi premiered his own version of the mythic tale.  His Orfeo, though heavily influenced by its Florentine predecessor, advanced the genre through expanded musical forces, heightened dramatic moments and a greater emphasis on formal elements. We just listened to the opening of the opera, which begins not with an overture, but with a toccata. In the early baroque, the overture had not yet been invented as a formal characteristic of the opera, nor had the toccata yet come to be known as an improvisatory keyboard piece. Instead, it was thought of as a fanfare type piece of instrumental music, which made it ideal for the opening of this elaborate work. 

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872-1958) Toccata Marziale For a composer whose music is so closely associated with the beauty of the British countryside, you might be surprised to learn that some of Vaughan Williams’ most famous music is also directly linked to war, specifically World War One. Both The Lark Ascending and Dona Nobis Pacem are inspired by the composer's time in the British Army in his early 40s, first as a medical orderly, then an artillery officer, and finally a music director. Although these pieces were written for classical ensembles, several  war works were  composed for military bands, including the Toccata Marziale or Martial Toccata. The long, winding melodies of this piece are reminiscent of the Baroque keyboard works from which it is inspired, and in the style of the very early fanfare-like Toccate, Vaughan Williams stipulated that the piece should be played as an opening number. 

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) Toccata Festiva, Op. 36 Barber’s Toccata Festiva stacks up almost like an organ concerto, so the distinction of  “toccata” for the work as a whole is curious. The label becomes clear as the organ part spins out, and the influence of Bach, with the help of other great Baroque keyboardists who developed the genre (Frescobaldi, Buxtehude) becomes aparent. The festive element of the work refers to its commision. Barber wrote this toccata in 1960 for the inaugaration of a brand new organ at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Eugene Ormandy led the Philadelphia Orchestra at the premier, with Paul Callaway, the organist at the National Cathedral breaking in the new organ. By 1960, concert pieces for organ and orchestra were not that unusual. The trend started in the late 19th century, when organs became more common in concert halls. At first, mostly serious, ceremonial and liturgical works were performed, but a raft of celebratory music was developed, typically by commision, as well.  

Paul Hindemith (1895-1963) String Trio No. 1, Op. 34: I. Toccata Hindemith wrote his first trio for strings during the early phase of his artistic development. The music from this period tends to be more avant-garde and dramatic, yet still has some elements of inspiration from music of the past, a quality which would become more apparent in Hindemith’s later compositions. This trio, for instance, incorporates baroque forms by opening with a toccata and closing with a fugue. Written in 1924, Hindemith left a note in his catalog that this piece was partially written while riding the train, a comment which makes the motor-like shimmering quality of the opening toccata all the more relevant. Each instrument takes its turn moving to the foreground out of the continuous patterns of notes. After a quick series of cadenzas, the opening melody is repeated an octave higher to close the movement.

Jules Massenet (1842-1912) Toccata in B-flat Massenet’s instrumental compositions often oscillate between humor and highly sensitive lyricism. Following Berlioz and Gounod, he tended to be more harmonically conservative than Debussy and Ravel, but was equally adept in colorful orchestration. This was probably from working for four years as a timpanist at the Theatre Lyrique, giving him the opportunity to become intimately familiar with French opera. Other than his operas, for which he is most well known, he considered his two attempts to write large symphonic works huge disappointments, and so the majority of his instrumental oeuvre is chamber music or the orchestral suite. His stunning toccata from 1892 was likely an influence on Ravel, whose own toccata was featured in our last toccata-themed show.  

John Adams (b.1947) Violin Concerto: III. Toccare Adam’s Violin Concerto was premiered in 1993 by Jorja Fleezonis, for whom the piece was written  The concerto is the final work in a series of instrumental compositions Adams worked on throughout the early 90’s, and contains some of the most complex counterpoint the composer ever wrote. Adams had much to say on the inspiration behind this piece, especially the first movement. He says “I had an image of a very regular, slowly repeating waveform, a staircase wave that goes up and down. There’s a certain predictability to it. Over that the solo melodic line floats in a very free, rhapsodic way. That largely is the ‘topos,’ not only of the first movement, but also the entire concerto, with the violin a free spirit that moves above this structurally coherent orchestral voice.”

Arvo Pärt (b.1935) Collage sur B-A-C-H: I. Toccata Arvo Pärt is typically grouped with a certain band of composers from the late-twentieth century informally referred to as “holy” or “mystic minimalists.” They used minimalist composition techniques—lots of repetition, minimal harmonic motion, simple melodic material—but composed with religion or mysticism in mind. For Pärt, this manifested itself through a technique he called tintinnabuli, meaning the continuous tolling of a major triad, accompanied by stepwise motion (often chant like melodies) to create a calm, minimalist landscape. Before he had developed this technique however, Pärt composed with a technique he called “Collage,”.a kind of re-inventing and reaction to serial or 12-tone composition. His first major work in the style, which we just listened to, borrows from Baroque forms, hence the Toccata, and builts the beginning of each tone row on Bach’s famous musical signiture: notes B, A, C, and B-flat, which in German music is written as an H. 

Alfredo Casella (1883-1947) Toccata, per pianoforte op.6 An Italian by birth, Alfredo Casella was influenced by French compositional techniques, including those of his teacher Faure and his close friends Enescu and Ravel. During his studies in Paris, he also became inspired by revolutionary visual art movements like futurism and cubism. After his studies he returned to Italy in 1915 where he became a leading promoter of modern music, surrounding himself with like-minded composers and organizing concerts of modernist music from across Europe. These subversive performances were not always well received by the public and sometimes devolved into violent protests. Casella’s own style of composition evolved through several distinct, sometimes conflicting phases, however his mature neo-classical style is probably most well-known. 

Ennio Morricone (1928-2020) La resa dei conti (From A Few Dollars More) Sergio Leone’s 1965 film For A Few Dollars More stars Clint Eastwood as “The Man With No Name,” a bounty hunter who partners with another fearless tracker (played by Lee Van Cleef) to hunt down a murderous bank robber. It was the second film in the “Dollars Trilogy,” which also featured the compelling, lyrical soundtrack of Ennio Morricone. The Italian westerns of the 1960s and 70s offered an alternative makeover of the archetypical cowboy hero. Formerly an idealistic icon of the American way, the cowboy now became a cynical anti-hero—a type of loner or outsider more familiar from American film noir or the Japanese Samurai film. In fact, Sergio Leone was sued by director Akira Kurosawa, because the first film in the trilogy: A Fistful of Dollars bore a striking similarity to Kurosawa’s film Yojimbo. While this dispute was settled amicably, some very real dollars were at stake.