Album insights
I am about to construct a quintet of immense proportions that will give full expression to my tenderness and the tragic fate of my child. The unrestrained, furious energy with which I undertake this task corresponds to the depth of my sorrow, and I will create something impressive, grandiose, and powerful. Perhaps one who has endured every sorrow, bitterness, and pain can alleviate the sufferings of others and provide solace—this is the role of the artist.
Louis Vierne's words, penned in February 1918 to a friend, vividly highlight the aims of a fundamentally romantic musical language that transcends all ego-centric poetic escapism to confront the cruel reality of everyday life. Despite being primarily revered for his significant contributions to the repertoire of his own instrument, Vierne has suffered under the widespread suspicion grounded in ignorance that nothing good could come from an organ loft. Even among lovers of romantic organ music, there may exist an unconscious tendency only to perceive strictly controlled, disembodied spirituality—or the appearance of emotion somehow neutralized by the objective facts of organist training—rather than the more impulsive personal sentiments of a profane world brought from the outside. However, the harmonic and tonal language of César Franck (Vierne's teacher, a father figure for composers of that time) is notably consistent in its alternation between allegedly religious spirituality and forbidden desires, such as those triggered in Franck's Piano Quintet (1878/79) by his young Irish student, Augusta Holmès. Composers like the mentioned ones subtly make it easy for us to split emotions into certain types on the precarious basis of an alleged gap between religiosity and secularity. While it is true that Vierne sought and found solace in the organ loft, the assumption that he thereby shed his emotional imprint due to a hard life is misleading. The painful intensity of his own Piano Quintet provides evidence to the contrary.
Louis Victor Jules Vierne was born on October 8, 1870, in Poitiers as one of three brothers and was baptized in the Saint-Pierre Cathedral nine days later. As he noted in his 1933 memoirs:
"I came into the world almost blind. Consequently, at home, I was enveloped in warm and enduring tenderness, which elicited extreme sensitivity in me from a very early age. It was to accompany me throughout my entire life and become the cause of both intense joys and unspeakable agonies."
Paradoxically, this tone of unreserved, outward self-assessment allows—albeit laconically—the unveiling of the mentioned agonies by denying them any hint of genuine self-pity. In any case, even the briefest chronicle makes it abundantly clear that the composer's difficulties were real.
Predisposed from his suffering to introspective dedication to his art, Louis Vierne, by his own admission, had voluntarily resigned himself to a life of celibate abstinence when his friend Charles Mutin (who as the successor of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll led his famous organ-building firm) called on him in March 1898 to serve as the godfather of his newborn daughter. Fate intervened in a way that introduced Arlette Taskin, the child's godmother, into his life. She was a beautiful eighteen-year-old singer, the daughter of a celebrated baritone at the Opéra-Comique who had passed away early. Initially confused and then enamored, Vierne believed he had found a kindred soul. This led to their marriage. A son named Jacques was born in 1900, followed by a second son André in 1903, and a daughter Colette in 1907. By the time of Colette's birth, Vierne, a student of Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, had been serving as an organist at the Notre-Dame de Paris church for seven years, having applied there against his wife's wishes on Widor's recommendation: an early omen. Further burdens were brought by the death of his mother-in-law, as he incorporated his wife's two younger siblings into his household.
The chain of adverse circumstances overwhelming Vierne must be briefly outlined, which may perhaps underscore their oppressive effect even more clearly. Many years earlier, he had lost his father and a beloved uncle. On May 18, 1906, an accident on the street (eerily similar to the one that befell Franck in 1890 and led to his death six months later) nearly necessitated the amputation of a leg. He had not fully recovered from this when he was struck by typhoid fever. Driven further into his inner world by his blindness and additional troubles and isolated from his family, Vierne seemed to have barely perceived the deterioration of his marriage. However, he was eventually informed of his wife's infidelity, and to his chagrin, it became apparent that his alleged friend Mutin was involved in it. Upon their divorce in 1909 (with the condition that he would never remarry), he was granted custody of his son Jacques, while André and Colette, due to their tender age and their father's blindness, were awarded to the mother. Vierne retreated to his mother's house, where she actively supported him in raising his oldest son. However, she died in 1911 of blood poisoning (after "eighty-three days of the most terrible agony ever experienced by a human being," as her son wrote), followed four days later by Vierne's friend and colleague Alexandre Guilmant, who succumbed to the same illness. Guilmant had been a professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire. Vierne had hoped that the loss would be mitigated at least by succeeding his friend in the position, after having served as an unpaid assistant professor for eighteen years. However, he witnessed himself as an innocent victim of a feud between the Conservatoire director Fauré and his former teacher Widor.
It was about to get worse. Following his separation from his father, André fell ill in 1909 with tuberculosis. He died on September 7, 1913, at the age of just ten, leading to a painful encounter between the estranged parents consumed by grief but unable to help each other. The next day, they bid farewell to each other once more. World War I was looming. In 1915, glaucoma set in, which would rob Vierne of the last remnants of his eyesight. Notre-Dame was damaged and Paris no longer retained much appeal for him. In Switzerland, where he had gone in the last two years of the war for further treatment of his eyes, he received the news of the death of his only remaining son Jacques, who had fallen at the front at the age of seventeen. Alone, almost completely blind, and weighed down by countless tragedies, he threw himself into the work on the piano quintet for his son. How he physically managed it remains unclear; earlier, he had almost literally worked with his nose on the paper, writing huge note heads on significantly enlarged staves and often seeking the help of his beloved younger brother René, who was himself a capable organist. One thing was certain: Not a single component of the creation of this secluded, turbulent music would become unproblematic.
The quintet is structured in three immense movements. The restrained piano octaves in the opening ("poco lento") unfold a menacingly sequenced "side blow" of a theme, marked by deliberately obscure tonality, a somber and impenetrable mood. The homophony of the responsive strings exhibits a striking, immediately noticeable resemblance to the early mature style of Frank Bridge, one of the few English composers of that time who was markedly influenced by Fauré. Piano and strings alternate at increasingly shorter intervals, leading into the "actual" first movement (Moderato), where the exploration of the introductory tone row by the strings expands rapidly amidst sparkling piano figurations. The differentiation between natural thematic development and a genuine transition is scarcely recognizable, and this process abruptly ends in an unexpected tonal shift, making the first appearance of the side theme (introduced as a cello solo over mournful piano chords) even more fascinating. Here, the composer's expressed sorrow and tenderness manifest in a longing idea, whose mournful sequenced descent cleverly reflects the ascending spiral of the rather neurasthenic main theme. The pervading influence of Franck and the model of Vierne's own attempt in this genre are evident in both the melodic intervals and the subtly satisfying symmetry of the side theme, which was clearly meaningful to Vierne and thus immediately expanded into an extensive reprise. Both Franck and Fauré are evoked in the unison (not in octaves) strings doubling—in employing the same artifice, both had already achieved a distinctly Gallic richness of sound in moments of heightened drama.
A piano solo introduces the development and initiates with its nervous sixteenth note pattern over the main motif, reminiscent of the beginning of Fauré's late Second Piano Quintet. The main theme is extensively explored in individual cells before the strings embark in polyphonic exploration of new sequenced possibilities with the side theme. An approaching climax is abruptly interrupted, and the menace of the work’s initial phrase reemerges in a muted form, rising again from the depths. Meanwhile, the piano engages more overtly in competition with the string group, pushing the medium beyond its inherent limits. A powerful passage building towards the climax is once again abruptly cut off, this time articulated by the piano over triplet-based string figuration. Following a rhapsodic continuation, a dolce-marked reprise that is particularly poignant and polyphonically rich is crafted. The