Toccata in G major BWV 916 (c 1710)

Allegro – Adagio – Allegro

To Bach and his contemporaries “toccata” did not mean what it came to mean to later generations – like Schumann and Prokofiev, to name the composers of only the most famous examples of the toccata as a virtuso expression of digital energy driven by much the same rhythms and at much the same breathless tempo throughout. All seven of Bach’s harpsichord toccatas, which are thought to have been written during (or even before) his period of director music at the court of Weimar, are in several movements with no fixed pattern except that they all end with a fugue. The Toccata in G differs from the others in that it has much in common with the concerto in the conventional three-movement form with an Adagio in the middle. The opening Allegro alternates light-textured solo episodes with a sequence of comparatively heavy six-note chords (standing for the orchestral part) and ends with a modest cadenza. After a thoughtful if melancholy Adagio in motet style, the Toccata ends with an impressively designed three-part Allegro fugue animated by the skip in the step of its main theme.