Suite No.3 for Organ

Historical context

This is the Third Suite of Vierne’s 24 Pièces de fantaisie, Op. 54, composed and published in 1927. It contains his second most famous piece, the Carillon de Westminster (No. 6), dedicated to his friend Henry Willis, the organ-builder of London. The movement spins a whole toccata out of the Westminster Quarters - the chimes of Big Ben - climbing from a single distant phrase to a full-organ peal. By tradition the tune came to Vierne during a 1924 recital at Westminster Cathedral, where Willis is said to have hummed the chimes for him; Vierne’s version does not exactly match the real bells, and writers still debate whether Willis misremembered the tune or Vierne reshaped it on purpose. He first played the finished piece at Notre-Dame on 29 November 1927.

Drawn from public reference sources (Wikipedia, standard organ-repertoire references).