THE ORIGINS OF ORGAN TOCCATA. TERMINOLOGY AND SOURCES FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE
THE ORIGINS OF ORGAN TOCCATA. TERMINOLOGY AND SOURCES FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE

Summary/Abstract: This paper addresses the complex issue of the Toccata genre. The first part aims to define the term Toccata from a historical and philological perspective as well as to summarize the viewpoints of various theorists about Toccata as a genre, as reflected in a variety of older or more recent musicological sources. Their review is intended on the one hand to highlight the complexity of the subject of the Toccata genre, and on the other to illustrate the active character of the research and the refinement of the hypotheses, observations, comparisons, argumentations and conclusions. The purpose of the second part of the paper is to offer an original analytical contribution to the studies on Toccata evolution in various European countries like Italy, Spain, Germany and on its correlation with genres like falsobordoni and intonazioni, while capturing the similarities and the specific differences between them. This study is therefore intended to lead to a few important questions concerning the origins of organ Toccata: is it an improvisatory, free genre or is it based, harmonically and structurally, on a cantus firmus or on a psalm tone? Does it by any chance derive from the intonatio and is it somehow influenced by the embellished vocal falsobordoni?

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