Robert Muczynski's First Piano Trio, Opus 24: a Narrative Analysis

The music of American composer and pianist Robert Muczynski (1929-2010) has lately received a more detailed analysis and broader attention by performers, listeners and the academic community. Among the works that have captured public and scholar’s attention is the First Piano Trio opus 24. Different studies, articles and reviews on the piece present detailed information concerning the musical design of the work, the composer’s style, and captivating gestures of the piece. Nevertheless, this literature offers little attention to the performance practice of the trio, and the recordings of the work are too few to advise an appropriate interpretation.
Therefore, this essay seeks to apply the theories of narrative analysis to improve our knowledge concerning the performance of Muczynski’s First Piano Trio. One has to bear in mind that an original performance depends not only on the examination of music elements such as harmony or rhythm, but also on how and why these gestures interact the way they do in a piece, main goal of the narrative analysis.