Roaring of the Full Organ: Louis Vierne in Kansas City

Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was a French organist and composer. I love organ music, and I have long enjoyed Vierne's music. My favorite work by Vierne is his 24 Pieces en style libre, op. 31. No. 15 in this composition is the Arabesque. A stunning, haunting, soft, moving, slightly disturbing, melancholy, and profoundly original work. You know me...I get something in my ear and I listen to it over and over and over. This is just such a piece.

The 24 Fantasy Pieces were composed in 1913-14. Thirteen years later, Vierne came to America for a concert tour, and he performed in Kansas City at the Westport Presbyterian Church on April 1, 1927. I found the review of his performance in the Kansas City Times.

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Louis Vierne , French Organist, Heard at Westport Presbyterian Church.

     Louis Vierne, who played last night the new Reuter organ in the Westport Avenue Presbyterian church, would have commanded the honest respect of his audience even had he been less generously endowed musically.

     For M. Vierne is almost without sight, an affliction that in any musician is sufficient to blast a career, and one that is especially hard for an organist , since no two organs are alike, and all are controlled from scattered stop pulls, inconspicuously placed pistons, and irregularly located foot pedale-to say nothing of the pedal keyboard and such ordinary matters. So that the loss of sight means usually the loss of a career.

     But not with M. Vierne. He solves a good part of his difficulty by carrying with him a young secretary, who not only assists him in the usual secretarial ways, but also pulls his stops and sets up his combinations for him. The remainder he does by pure ability, and so well he need ask quarter from no one. The element of spontaneity was lacking; its inclusion would have been too much to ask. The interpretations had a fixed character, and gave an impression of "predestination" thoroughly in keeping with certain religious faiths.

     But for the remainder, the audience had reason to be thankful. The organist has, for one thing, a delicate sense of color values, and he is not of the type that startles an audience periodically with sudden roaring of the full organ. His climaxes were subtly prepared, and more subtly led away from than usual. His dexterity was sufficient, and his fingers (and feet) were extraordinarily accurate considering the fact that sight did not direct them. 

     A good deal of the music was M. Vierne's. For the most part it is a strange mixture of French sureness of touch and neatness with German sentiment, especially the closing set of six "Fantasie Pieces," each of which was very surely wrought, and definite in character.

     The visiting organist came under the auspices of the Kansas City chapter of the National Association of Organists, of which chapter Hans Fell is president. M. Vierne is titular organist of Notre Dame cathedral in Paris.

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