Bach's D minor Toccata and Fugue has long been one of my favourite works. Even though I find the exposition of the fugue oddly simplistic for Bach, I've always loved the drama of the work and its improvisational feel.
So, like Tyler Cowen, I'm shocked to discover that some scholars doubt its authenticity.
The arguments seem to include:
One theory is that it is an organ transcription of a piece for strings by another composer.
Like many popular articles on scholarly controversy, it's not easy to tell just how mainstream a view it is. It happens all the time in Biblical Studies that one scholar's controversial viewpoint is published in popular article as though it were scholarly consensus.
I'm also dubious of authorship debates in general just because I think the variation within one author can be much greater than the average difference between authors. And isn't a composer allowed to experiment and grow?
As (a sorry excuse for) a composer, I'm very aware of just how different my works from different time periods are.
Still, it's a fascinating theory, and one I might have to dive into a bit more.