Toccata duodecima et ultima

I am playing a recital next month featuring three organs and a few pieces on each, all toccatas. The Transylvanian Baroque organ by Hahn, sampled by Inspired Acoustics, is a real gem. It's a central/southern German style inspired build. I think the synthesis works very well for Muffat, who also combined several international musical styles into his pieces.

Muffat's 12th and final toccata has several sections of contrasting characters, tempos, articulations, and affects. The opening part is all based on descending and ascending scales of the tonic and dominant. I registered this on the plenum and added reeds.

The first part of section two is played on the swell on a flute choir, and for the second part I picked up the tempo and used a larigot for additional edge and sparkle.

I registered the third section using the southern German positive principal chorus with mutations from the great added, so it acts like an Italian ripieno.

Section four is a dazzling display of arpeggios in both hands, yet delicately played on a four-foot flute chorus registration. (I really wanted to use the cymbel here for glitz, but you could not discern the descending octaves of the broken chords because the repetition of the cymbel across the keyboard obscured the different registers.)

I think of section five as opening with a fanfare, so I play it on a trumpet chorus. I used extended couplers from Hauptwerk to achieve the additional octaves not featured on the original organ, but which work great for parts like this. The fanfare announces the stately gigue of a French court, which I registered with krummhorn and flutes and strings from the southern German positive. (I thought about Renaissance ensembles here.)

Lastly, section six is an extended coda played on the full organ with all principal, flute, and reed stops. The original opening material comes back and the entire piece ends on one note with an extended trill and turn, a dramatic close if ever there were one.