A certain uneasiness regarding the authorship of BWV 565 had been around long before the 1980s. From Hilgenfeldt in 1850, to Elgar in the 1920s, to Basso in the late 1970s, the extraordinary popularity of the piece seems to have taken scholars and musicians by surprise. Of Mendelssohn's prophecy that it was something for both the erudite and the masses, only the latter part had been fulfilled. Some scholars who analysed the composition's counterpoint felt it was substandard. They said it was stylistically too close to the galant style of the later 18th century to be an early 18th century composition. Its presumed time of composition shifted around. Some felt the composition was too modern to have been composed by a young Bach, or too simplistic to have been composed by a middle-aged Bach. Although many commentators have invoked Bach's genius to explain the dislocated modernity in an immature composition, an increasing number of scholars felt unsatisfied with such an intangible explanation.