Louis Vierne

Louis Vierne was the organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral, Paris for nearly 40 years, and his organ works encompassed six symphonies, 24 Pièces de fantaisie (including the famous “Carillon de Westminster”), and the Vingt-quatre pièces en style libre. It’s inevitable, then, that the French composer’s reputation is inextricably bound up with the instrument. Born in Poitiers in 1870 with congenital cataracts, Vierne was essentially blind from birth. Although he underwent surgery as an infant that restored partial vision, it remained severely impaired throughout his life. He could see only vague shapes and light, and was never able to read music or text in any conventional way. He learned to read Braille music and relied heavily on memory, dictation and touch. Despite these limitations, Vierne became one of the French Romantic organ movement’s most important figures. Around 1881, he had an emotional childhood encounter with the playing of César Franck that determined the future focus of his career, and his subsequent studies with the organist composer instilled a fluid approach to harmony. Although Symphony No. 1 (1899) clearly builds on the examples of Franck and another of his teachers, the great Charles-Marie Widor, Symphony No. 3 from 1911 marks a stylistic turning point with its personal harmonic voice, richer chromaticism, bolder modulations and a more symphonic (rather than suite-like) sense of structure across its five movements. Vierne’s Symphony No. 6 (1930), describing a darkness-to-light trajectory across its five movements, represents another stylistic leap with its impressionistic language and nods to jazz in the final movement. But there’s more to Vierne than the organ, and his chamber music is increasingly receiving admiring attention, while the Messe solennelle (1899) makes ear-catching antiphonal use of the accompanying instruments. Several works speak of a life clouded by tragedy, none more so perhaps than the Piano Quintet of 1917, which mourns the wartime death of a son. Vierne himself died in 1937 at the console of Notre-Dame’s great Cavaillé-Coll organ as he was about to conclude a recital dedicated to his own music.