It is truly a tragedy, for his only orchestral Symphony reveals a master born of the genre and ranks alongside the most important works written in France at the time by Chausson, Dukas, Magnard and soon by Roussel.

[2]If his sight, "weakened but appreciable nevertheless, had allowed him to write his compositions with a pen and to have recourse to a third party only for the work of copying or orchestration, which would have fatigued him too much",[3] it is always in the glow of a bec Auer (so close and a fire so intense that he confided to one of his friends that "the litters would end up becoming bloody".

Vierne suffers terribly from this, and since, in his home, all pain manifests itself in music, since the creative impulse is rooted in a violent feeling, whatever it may be, he undertakes to write a Symphony for orchestra, the epigraph of which says enough about the weariness that suddenly embraces him:

Pugno admires the expressive sobriety of the 'Allegro' and, while his fingers are peeling off the desolate lament of the Lamento, he gives Vierne eloquent glances; then when he has finished, he stands up and, without a word, comes to kiss his friend Gavoty.

24 is in two large "parts" or four movements: The Lamento, "whose character is more than melancholy, bears as its epigraph verses from Verlaine which Vierne later used for one of the melodies of Spleens et détresses [fr]":[10] Un grand sommeil noir Tombe sur ma vie ; Dormez, tout espoir, Dormez, toute envie… For Gavoty, "this suggestive Lamento, like everything else in Vierne's work that springs from the heart, is the most original part of the symphony, the other three movements (Grave and Allegro molto, Scherzo and Finale) being, in spite of their masterful craftsmanship, of a more traditional cut".

[11] Gavoty, however, considers it to be one of the beautiful orchestral works of the pre-war period, and one of the last testimonies of symphonic art, which, after 1918, no longer found the favour it had enjoyed at the junction of the two centuries:[7] Louis Vierne's symphony is, along with those of Paul Dukas, Vincent d'Indy and Albéric Magnard, a fine example of the generous and inspired flame that animated the French school before 1914.