Violin Solo - Digital Download SKU: A0.992461 Composed by Eric Watson. 20th Century,Contemporary. 6 pages. Eric Watson #3505615. Published by Eric Watson (A0.992461). The title Toccata comes from the Italian word toccare meaning to touch and generally implies a composition that has many fast notes featuring technical and virtuosic playing requiring great finger facility. The subtitle though is Eccentric Dance and as I wrote it I had in mind the Tarantella dance originating from the province of Taranto, Italy. This dance has two aspects, a stately court dance, which you can hear in the middle section of the work and a more frenetic, agitated movement which is heard in the first and final section. This supposedly originates from the jerky, hysterical and spasmodic body actions of a victim bitten by the wolf or tarantula spider common to that region of Italy. The ‘whirling, delirium’ tarantella dance is most often written in 6/8 and is played faster and faster and ends only when one of the dancers gives up in exhaustion! Toccata was written as a test pice for the Singapore National Piano and Violin Competition, 2017, and is 5.00 minutes in length.