Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565

What it is

The Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565) is an organ piece traditionally credited to Johann Sebastian Bach, written sometime between 1704 and the 1750s. No original manuscript by Bach survives; the piece is known from a copy made decades later by the scribe Johannes Ringk, held today in the Berlin State Library.

Why it matters

Scholars disagree about whether Bach actually wrote this piece, with some suggesting it may be the work of other composers such as Johann Peter Kellner, who taught Ringk. It remained little known until the 19th-century Bach Revival championed by Felix Mendelssohn, and became globally famous in the 20th century through Leopold Stokowski's orchestral arrangement used in Disney's Fantasia (1940).

Look closer

• How can musicians and historians debate who really wrote a piece of music centuries later?
• What problems arise when the only surviving copy of a work was made by someone other than the composer?
• Why might a piece become famous in a form very different from how it was originally written?