Brooklyn Toccata

Earlier this year, I came across a collection of J.S. Bach’s “Toccatas for Keyboard”, BWV 910-916, tucked away on my bookshelf. It had belonged to my great-grandmother, Elizabeth Weiss, who was a piano teacher in New Jersey until her death in 1973. After years of playing her other collections of Bach’s keyboard works, I was surprised to find that I’d entirely missed this one. I became engrossed in these six toccatas, guided by my greatgrandmother’s pencil markings. “Toccata” comes from the Italian toccare, meaning “to touch”, and toccatas are generally fast-paced, virtuosic pieces involving intricate fingerwork and multiple sections. When John Kamitsuka reached out to ask if I would write a piece for this concert, I was feeling inspired by my new Bach book, and I set out to write my own toccata. As I worked on the piece, I thought about other virtuosic, toccata-like pieces I loved to play while growing up, like Ravel’s “Ondine”, Rachmaninoff’s “Etude-Tableaux”, and Rzewski’s “Winnsboro Cotton Mill Blues”. As I sought to overcome the technical challenges in those pieces, the figurations they contained became a part of my physicality. Many of the techniques in those pieces still appear in my improvisations and compositions, both intentionally and unintentionally. In writing this “toccata”, I felt a deep connection to the pieces and people that made it possible, from Bach to Ravel to Elizabeth Weiss.

— Will Healy, 2024