| Summary: | Carlos Enrique Vargas Méndez (1919-1998) was one of the most influential and versatile Costa Rican musicians of the last century. His work involved many areas since he was an accomplished pianist and organist, conductor, composer, arranger, editor, pedagogue and musicologist. However, Vargas work as a composer is perhaps the least researched and most neglected of the music disciplines he embraced. This research will focus on one of Vargas most important compositions, his Piano Concerto Op. 13, composed and premiered in 1944.
The monograph is divided into four chapters. The first chapter includes a synopsis of the history of composition in Costa Rica, in order to provide historical background and musical influences on the Concerto. Chapter Two offers biographical information about Vargas, drawn from the most authoritative sources on the subject. The third chapter provides a comprehensive analysis of the formal and thematic structures of the Concerto, and Chapter Four deals with some pedagogical and performance considerations of the composition. Due to the lack of a published version of the piece, a performance edition of the Concerto is presented in Appendix A. This edition was made with permission of the composers son, Roberto Enrique Vargas.
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