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Sheet music: www.joshlayne.com/store/?prod...
PHEWWWWWWW! I learned this spook-tacular Toccata in under a week, and wow, was it such a fun ride!
According to Brittanica.com, one can define Toccata as: "toccata, musical form for keyboard instruments, written in a free style that is characterized by full chords, rapid runs, high harmonies, and other virtuoso elements designed to show off the performer's 'touch.' The earliest use of the term (about 1536) was associated with solo lute music of an improvisatory character."
I've been joking with my students that it's almost like "tickling" the strings! :-)
I had so much fun dressing up as composer J.S. Bach, and getting back to my classical roots with some fun harp techniques.
Here is Toccata in D Minor, from BWV 565!
Happy Halloween, everyone! Stay safe and have fun!
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From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata...
The Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, is a piece of organ music written, according to its oldest extant sources, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). The piece opens with a toccata section, followed by a fugue that ends in a coda. Scholars differ as to when it was composed. It could have been as early as c. 1704. Alternatively, a date as late as the 1750s has been suggested. To a large extent, the piece conforms to the characteristics deemed typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era with divergent stylistic influences, such as south German characteristics.
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The first publication of the piece, in the Bach Revival era, was in 1833, through the efforts of Felix Mendelssohn, who also performed the piece in an acclaimed concert in 1840. Familiarity with the piece was enhanced in the second half of the 19th century by a fairly successful piano version by Carl Tausig, but it was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach. That popularity further increased, for example, after its inclusion in Walt Disney's Fantasia (in Stokowski's orchestral transcription), until this composition became, by far, the best-known work of the 18th-century organ repertoire.[1]
A wide, and often conflicting, variety of analyses has been published about the piece: for instance, in literature on organ music, it is often described as some sort of program music depicting a storm, while in the context of Disney's Fantasia, it was promoted as absolute music, nothing like program music depicting a storm.
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The title page of Ringk's manuscript writes the title of the work in Italian as Toccata con Fuga, names Johann Sebastian Bach as the composer of the piece, and indicates its tonality as "ex. d. #.", which is usually seen as the key signature being D minor.
29 окт 2023