1870	October 8: Birth of Louis Vierne in Poitiers, son of Henri Vierne, a journalist of strong Bonapartist sympathies and editor-in-chief of the newspaper Journal de la Vienne. Louis is born nearly blind.
1872	Two-year-old Vierne hears the sound of a piano for the first time, coming from nextdoor, On a visit, the neighbor plays and sings him a Schubert lullaby, and to his mother's disbelief, the child starts to pick out on the keyboard the notes of the melody he has just heard.
1873	In April, Louis' family leaves Poitiers to move to Paris, where his father has accepted a job as editor-in-chief of Paris-Journal. He buys Louis a splendid toy: a little two-octave piano with glass keys.
	His parents seek the advice of uncle Charles Colin, oboe professor at the Paris Conservatory and organist at the Church of St-Denis-du-Saint-Sacrement (St Denis of the Holy Sacrament).
	September 26, birth of his sister Henriette.
1875	In March, a visiting cousin unknowingly infects the three Vierne children with measles.
	In April, he must move to Lille, where his father has become editor-in-chief of the Mémorial de Lille. The family will reside there during the next five years.
	Louis hears a church organ for the first time at the family's local parish, St-Maurice de Lille. He would later recount: "I had a very hard time imagining how one man alone could get from this instrument these mysterious rich sounds, both stormy and calm: it seemed like something out of a fairy-tale."
1876	January 18, his sister Henriette dies of pulmonary congestion.
	He is consigned to Sisters of the Order of the Holy Union (la Sainte-Union) for instruction in the rudiments of grammar, history, geography, and arithmetic. A typesetter at the newspaper makes a special large-type reader for the little boy with the grave visual impairment.
1877	His father consults several ophtalmologists in and around Lille, who diagnose the boy as having inoperable congenital cataracts. Nonetheless, they refer Louis' father to a Dr de Wecker in Paris who confidently proposes a rather experimental opeation.
	Dr. de Wecker believes he can restore enough of young Louis' vision to permit him to go about town on his own, to read large print, and to distingish from a distance the landscape features and large objects.
	On April 2nd and 6th, Louis undergoes in two stages the operation which will provide him with partial sight. He is compelled during his convalescence to remain in Paris six weeks with his mother. The operation turns out to be a success!
	Back in Lille, Louis starts to learn braille, under the instruction of Richard Hormann, a former pupil at the Institute for Blind Youth (Institut des Jeunes Aveugles). He begins piano lessons with Miss Gosset.
1878	March 11, birth of his brother René
1879	His uncle Charles Colin visits Lille on the occasion of a performance of his Mass at the Church of St-Maurice.
	At the request of his parents, the resident organist of St-Maurice, who is a friend of the owner of the newspaper, gives Louis a close-up demonstration of the enormous instrument, leaving a very deep impression on the lad.
	Vierne is so inspired in his keyboard studies that his mother is compelled to lock the piano with a key, to limit his practice to a maximum of three hours daily.
1880	The prince impérial dies, effectively ending the bonapartist cause. The bonapartist Memorial de Lille must merge with its Republican competitor the Echo du Nord. Refusing to have any part in this, Henri Vierne quits and takes the family back to Paris, where he takes an editor's post at the Figaro.
	The family moves into 4 place Dancourt, in the Montmartre neighborhood. Louis will call this his home during the next 19 years.
	Vierne advances swiftly in his keyboard work, under the private guidance of the oboe and piano teacher Henri Specht (who, incidentally, is blind).
	Louis' uncle Charles takes him to hear César Franck at the organ of the Church of Ste-Clotilde. Some years later, in 1886, he will candidly say to the Master: "I heard you at Ste-Clotilde when I was ten years old, and I nearly died of delight."
1881	In April his uncle Charles, to whom he is very attached, shows him the organ at his own church, St-Denis-du- Saint-Sacrement, showing Louis how it is operated and also demonstrating for him a little of the art of improvisation.
	In July, Charles Colin is recipient of the Légion d'Honneur following the brilliant performance of his organ students in a competition in which the whole class takes awards. At home, the entire Vierne family celebrates this double success of Uncle Charles.
	Just twelves days later (on July 26), Charles Colin dies after four days' affliction with double pneumonia. Young Louis is stunned, and crushed with grief.
	In October, still in the shadow of his dear uncle's death, Vierne enters the Institution Nationale des Jeunes Aveugles, where he plunges himself passionately into his study of the piano, organ, and violin.
1882	In his history and geography class, teacher Edgar Guilbeau will exert a crucial influence on the teen-aged Vierne's moral and intellectual growth.
	May 4th, Vierne makes his First Holy Communion.
	He wins first prize in Roman history and first honourable mention for Geography.
	To commemorate and celebrate the centennial of the founding of the school by Valentin Haüy, a new concert hall is built, in which will be installed a Cavaillé-Coll organ of 36 stops, three manuals and pedalboard, furnished with three expressive boxes.
1883	After one year's construction, the Cavaillé-Coll organ is brought to the school and installed in just six weeks, to the surprise of all. The new organ, which is inaugurated in March, is a source of great delight* especially to the students.
	*[ Retrace the stages in the installation of a new Rieger pipeorgan at the Christchurch Town Hall organ site, Christchurch, New Zealand. ]
	In April, Levitte, the well-loved dean-of-students at the school, dies unexpectedly (of pulmonary congestion) - a great sorrow for all. Regrettably, the successor of this fine man was (in Vierne's own words) "a vain and stupid brute who understood utterly nothing of his proper role: he treated us like prisoners, and used to boast of how much he despised us."
	Vierne's father begins giving him greater attention than previously, treating him more like an adult, and discussing some of life's more serious matters. His father urges to keep to his diligent pursuit of his studies, and then get into César Franck's organ class at the Paris Conservatory, as his uncle Charles had hoped he would.
	Louis, with his father, pays more frequent visits to his grandmother Vierne, a lucid elderly woman filled with tales from the period of the Revolution and the rise of Napoleon.
1884	Vierne joins the school orchestra and the string quartet - something he has been eagerly awaiting for two years.
1885	In June Vierne travels with his school's orchestra and choirs to the Netherlands, where they will give four concerts in Amsterdam at the Palace of Industry, on the occasion of a congress.
	His summer holiday is saddened by his father's slowly failing health, which has now become more noticeable. Once the eternal optimist, his father is now somber and continually tired.
1886	June 5, Henri Vierne dies of stomach cancer. Vierne feels a "dreadful sorrow" on his passing.
	Saint-Saëns composes his Third Symphony for organ and orchestra.
1888	Vierne graduates from the Institute with top grades.