Toccata und Fuge F-Dur "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott"

The melody was long considered to be his work as well, but was composed with the collaboration of at least Johann Walter. The song is of great symbolic power for Protestantism.

I completed this complex work just in time for the Reformation festival. With a playing time of over 10 minutes, it is one of the more voluminous of my compositions. As a Protestant in the Catholic Rhineland, this song has a deeper meaning for me.
At this point, a small digression into the area where I live, namely in the middle of Bonn. The large churches in the Rhineland are those of the Catholics, if we just think of the basilica Major in Cologne (colloquially known as Cologne Cathedral) or the smaller basilica in Bonn (Bonn Minster). The Protestant churches in Bonn are smaller, we have the Kreuzkirche on Kaiserplatz, a 10-minute walk from my flat, but it has an organ with 65 sounding voices distributed over 4 manuals and pedal, the so-called Ott organ .... But now back again (I digress) to the Reformation festival and THE hymn of the Protestant believers par excellence - "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott".

The text is based on Psalm 46, "God is our confidence and strength". The question of whether Luther actually composed the melody divided musicologists in the 19th century. According to Michael Fischer, Luther is (only) "presumably [...] also the author of the melody"; according to evangelisch.de, it is "disputed" "whether the melody was composed by Luther". According to Christa Maria Richter, one can "assume that the melody [...] was a joint work of Luther and Walter, if it is not even predominantly by Walter".

The oldest surviving source is the Augsburg Form und Ordnung geistlicher Gesang und Psalmen of 1529. The song was also printed in the Erfurt Gesangbuch by Andreas Rauscher (1531).