Commotio, Carl Nielsen's last composition, was also his only major composition for organ. He had written the 29 Preludes in 1929 to get the feel of the instrument, but the Preludes themselves were brief pieces, more character studies than fully worked out compositions. Commotio, however, is a nearly half-hour long work that uses all the devices of counterpoint and all the compositional techniques Nielsen had worked out over a lifetime to create what most critics have called the greatest Danish organ work since Buxtehude. As Nielsen wrote to a friend about Commotio, "The work is an attempt to revive the only true and vital style for the organ, polyphonic music, which is especially suited for this instrument, so long misleadingly considered as a kind of an orchestra." The work is in four movements played attaca: free introductory Adagio, first fugue, a slow interlude, and a second and final fugue ending in a massive stretto. Like so many of Nielsen's mature works, the Commotio begins in one key and closes in another, in this case G minor modulating to C major. Nielsen died before the work was performed, and it was posthumously premiered in October 1931.

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