Donemus Webshop — Toccata

Other authors:
Veldhuis, Jacob ter (Composer)
Description:
During a camping holiday on the forested Catalonian coast in May 1987, I heard the peculiar call of a bird unknown to me at night. The bird moved in wide circles above the dark forest while singing. It was a short, regular tone repeated over and over, with a small grace note, so monotonous that at first, I suspected it might be location signals from electronic devices or perhaps even satellites.
A year later, on the Italian west coast north of Rome, I heard the same bird again, but now in greater numbers. There were four or five of them producing a complex, aleatoric polyphony together. Each bird sang its monotonous tune at a different pitch and pace, following its own individual course above the forest.
After some research, I discovered that it was the *otus scops*, the Eurasian scops owl, a rather elusive bird in Southern Europe. These experiences inspired me to write *Toccata*. At that time, At the time I was still grappling with the problem of tonality versus atonality. I refused to give in to the atonal and serial trend that had a strong hold on almost all composers back then and was searching for a musically satisfying way to maintain harmony. I decided to choose a tonal center within the symmetry of the piano keyboard, selecting D as the central note, around which I composed a complex pattern of the repetitive calls of the scops owls. Over time the musical texture thickens, the pianist eventually runs out of hands and is forced to play the central D with the nose, visually imitating the diving movement of the owl towards its prey.
I was immensely pleased with my new piece, but I hadn’t yet realised that it was almost unplayable. I dedicated the *Toccata* to my friend Kees Wieringa. As Kees tried desperately to master the piece, I realised that itwas actually a parodic pastiche, a satire on what I found to be the laughable complexity of much of the avant-garde music that time, where the pianist’s nose had to provide a solution. In Darmstadt, Keres and I gave a lecture-recital about the use of the nose in modern piano literature for a full audience of musicologists and other experts. I expected to elicit laughter, but we apparently presented our session so convincingly that our audience took a genuine interest in the delicate touch of the nose, ranging from pianissimo to a maximum of mezzo-forte, considering its vulnerability.

Sheet Music
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Product	Description	Price/piece	Count
Score	Download to Newzik (B4), 16 pages	EUR 14.18
	Download as PDF (B4), 16 pages	EUR 17.01
	Hardcopy, normal size (B4), 16 pages	EUR 28.36
	Hardcopy, study size (A4), 16 pages	EUR 23.28