Louis Vierne • Allegretto, op. 1

Louis Vierne's first organ work, composed in 1894 and, quite unjustly, unfortunately received very little attention, shows the full extent of the admiration that Louis Vierne must have had for his teacher César Franck. The entire piece of music is so inspired by Franck that one sometimes believes it was composed by Franck himself. The melodious design of the canon in the middle, which is also present as a design element in a similarly intense way in Vierne's first symphony, is entirely in the spirit of the canons that Franck was so fond of using in his works. If you listen to Franck's Andantino and Vierne's Allegretto back to back, it becomes particularly obvious.
Nevertheless, in this small but difficult piece we can already see the harmonic and stylistic peculiarities of the later Louis Vierne.

Learn details about my Hauptwerk Setup at
http://www.christophkeller.org