[2] The piece opens with a toccata section followed by a fugue that ends in a coda, and is largely typical of the north German organ school of the Baroque era.

It was not until the 20th century that its popularity rose above that of other organ compositions by Bach, as exemplified by its inclusion in Walt Disney's 1940 animated film Fantasia that featured Leopold Stokowski's orchestral transcription from 1927.

[7] In his critical commentary for Breitkopf & Härtel's 21st-century revised edition of the score, Jean-Claude Zehnder narrows the time of origin of the manuscript down to around the middle of the first half of the 1730s, based on an analysis of the evolution of Ringk's handwriting.

[19][20] As was common practice for German music of the 17th century, the intended registration is not specified, and performers' choices vary from simple solutions such as organo pleno to exceedingly complex ones, like those described by Harvey Grace.

[22][25] The work's appearance (in an orchestral transcription by Leopold Stokowski) in the 1940 Walt Disney film Fantasia contributed to its popularity,[26] around which time scholars started to seriously doubt its attribution to Bach.

[2] Its defining characteristics have been associated with extant compositions by Bach (BWV 531, 549a, 578, 911, 914, 922 and several of the solo violin sonatas and partitas),[2][14][33][34][35] and by others (including Nicolaus Bruhns and Johann Heinrich Buttstett),[2] as well as with untraceable earlier versions for other instruments and/or by other composers.

[44] In the early 1910s, Albert Schweitzer collaborated with Charles-Marie Widor to compile a complete edition of Bach's organ compositions, published by Schirmer.

[57] In that, and subsequent releases of Walcha's recordings of BWV 565 on Deutsche Grammophon (DG), there is an obvious evolution of the work from "one among many" organ compositions by Bach to a definite signature piece by the composer.

In early Archiv Produktion releases, the list on the sleeve contained the organ compositions in the order they appeared on the recording without distinction;[57] in the 1960s, BWV 565 began to be listed first;[58] by the 1980s, the font size for BWV 565 was larger than that of the other compositions;[59] and in the 1990s, Walcha's 1963 recording of the piece became the only piece by Bach included in DG's Classic Mania CD set with popular tunes by various classical composers.

[61] Hans-Joachim Schulze describes the force of the piece on a record sleeve:[62]Here is elemental and unbounded power, in impatiently ascending and descending runs and rolling masses of chords, that only with difficulty abates sufficiently to give place to the logic and balance of the fugue.

With the reprise of the initial Toccata, the dramatic idea reaches its culmination amidst flying scales and with an ending of great sonority.Organists recording BWV 565 more than once include Jean Guillou,[63] Lionel Rogg[64] and Wolfgang Rübsam.

His description of the piece refers to long sections that are surfeit: "rocking passages which have no connection whatever with the chief idea" and organ recitatives alternating with "ponderous, roaring masses of chords".

[94] In the 1979 first volume of his Bach biography, Alberto Basso calls BWV 565 "famosissimo" (most famous) and "celebratissima" (most celebrated), maintaining that the popularity of these works hinges entirely on this composition.

He feels that the crescendo that develops through arpeggios, gradually building up to the use of hundreds of pipes at the same time, can show exactly at what point the wind system of the organ might become inadequate.

In that book he devoted less than a page to BWV 565, and considers it some kind of program music depicting a tempest, including flashes of lightning and rumbling thunder.

Keller sees the opening bars' unison passages as "descending like a lightning flash, the long roll of thunder of the broken chords of the full organ, and the stormy undulation of the triplets".

Oskar Fischinger had previously used Bach's Third Brandenburg Concerto to accompany abstract animations and suggested to Stokowski that his orchestral version of BWV 565 could be used in the same way.

However, starting with the Toccata and Fugue and the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Stokowski, Disney and the music critic Deems Taylor chose other compositions to incorporate into their film project, known as "The Concert Piece."

By the time Disney's Fantasia was released in 1940, the animations accompanying BWV 565 had been made semi-abstract, although Fischinger's original idea that the performance of the music start with showing Stokowski directing his orchestra was preserved.

[114] The piece has appeared in many other films, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), in which it is played by Captain Nemo on the organ of the Nautilus, before the submarine's pitiless and apparently unmotivated attack on a ship.

The cowboy shootout with Gian Maria Volonté takes place in a deconsecrated church, turned into a pigsty, where the theme is heard on the organ at full blast.

In his autobiographical book written with De Rosa (2019), Morricone wrote that, "The death ritual carried out in a church convinced me to use the Bach quotation and the organ.

[95][131] Although many commentators have invoked Bach's genius to explain the dislocated modernity in an immature composition,[28][36][96] an increasing number of scholars felt unsatisfied with such an intangible explanation.

[27] In a 1981 article, Peter Williams reiterated the speculations, from which he saw a way out of the conundrum, already featured in his 1980 book on Bach's organ compositions:[27] The analysis of the material sources for the piece, its oldest surviving manuscripts, although insufficiently pursued according to some scholars,[132] was seen as too limited to give a conclusive answer to these questions.

[136] After initially confirming Williams's doubts about the authorship of BWV 565,[137] by the second decade of the 21st century, statistical analysis left the attribution issue undecided.

[141] Roger Bullivant thought the fugue too simple for Bach and saw characteristics that were incompatible with his style:[131] These doubts about the authorship of BWV 565 were elaborated by Peter Williams in a 1981 article.

[8] In his book on BWV 565, which he expanded in 1998 to counter some of the criticisms it received, Claus also dismisses the prior-version options suggested by Williams, noting that the toccata was an unknown genre for violin solo compositions of the time.

[145] Williams suggested that the piece may have been created by another composer who must have been born in the beginning of the 18th century, since details of style (such as triadic harmony, spread chords, and the use of solo pedal) may indicate post-1730, or even post-1750 idioms.

[147] In 2009, Reinmar Emans wrote that Claus and Wolff had diametrically opposed views on the reliability of Ringk as a copyist, inspired by their respective positions in the authenticity debate, and thinks that sort of speculation unhelpful.

Parallel octaves and the preponderance of thirds and sixths may be explained by a transcriber's attempt to fill in harmony which, if preserved as is, would be inadequately thin on a pipe organ.