As indicated by the accepted title of the piece, the Toccata and Fugue is in D minor. The Toccata begins with a single-voice flourish in the upper ranges of the keyboard, doubled at theoctave. It then spirals toward the bottom, where a diminished seventh chord appears (which actually implies a dominant chord with a minor 9th against a tonic pedal), built one note at a time. This resolves into a D major chord, taken from the parallel major mode. This is followed by three short passages, each reiterating a short motif, and each doubled at the octave. The section ends with a diminished seventh chord which resolved, through a flourish, into the tonic, D minor. The second section of the Toccata a number of loosely connected figurations and flourishes; the pedal switches to the dominant key, A minor. This section segues into the third and final section of the Toccata, which consists almost entirely of a passage doubled at the sixth and comprising reiterations of the same three-note figure, similar to doubled passages in the first section. After a brief pedal flourish, the piece ends with a D minor chord.
