“Final” from Symphony No. 1 – Louis Vierne | Piping Up: Selects (Andrew Unsworth)

Andrew Unsworth plays the “Final” movement from Louis Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 1, performed on the Aeolian-Skinner Organ in the Salt Lake Tabernacle on Temple Square (Salt Lake City, Utah).

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) had learned piano as a child, but experienced something of a creative epiphany upon hearing César Franck play the organ. He continued studies with Franck and also with Charles-Marie Widor, whose “organ symphonies” opened new vistas of musical possibility for Vierne.

Organ “symphonies” were made possible by the innovative designs of the renowned French organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who created instruments that were able to more easily negotiate changes in sound color and dynamics, like a symphony orchestra. Cavaillé-Coll’s most famous instruments from the middle of the 19th century include the organs installed in Paris’s Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Basilicas of Saint-Denis, Sainte-Clotilde, and Sacré-Cœur, and the Church of Saint-Sulpice (which remained the largest pipe organ in France until the late 20th century.)

It was while working as Widor’s assistant at Saint-Sulpice that Vierne composed his first Organ Symphony in 1899. This work has six movements, and is dedicated to Vierne’s friend and colleague, the organist Alexandre Guilmant. The famous “Final”—a jubilant carillon-style toccata—is, naturally, the last movement, a breathtaking finale.

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Piping Up! is an online series of concerts and performances by the organists serving on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, Utah, sponsored and presented by The Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square.
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