A suite for solo piano inspired by the Heroic Journey

This thesis is an exploration of the role an audience might assume in a musical performance, and is a test of the hypothesis that listeners' engagement with a composition can be increased by giving them a role in the creation of a programmatic narrative frame for the music. A Story Untold is a piano suite in seven movements designed around stages of the Heroic Journey as described by Joseph Campbell in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces. Seven stages from his list of seventeen were used as inspiration for musical compositions, and together these movements musically portray the story of a heroic journey. The story is unwritten, but each movement's title describes a key event in the hero's quest and together they outline a framework onto which listeners, by consciously or unconsciously filling in the details, can create their own story inspired by the music. The written component of this thesis contains reflections on Campbell's work as well as analyses of the individual movements.