A former law student, Vincent d'Indy was one of César Franck's many pupils. It was Franck who assisted d'Indy in clearly understanding the importance of tonal architecture and the clear development of themes. In 1887, shortly after finishing his studies with Franck, d'Indy combined the style he had inherited with his studies of Gregorian chant and early contrapuntal technique to create his first chamber trio for piano, violin (or clarinet), and cello. D'Indy's four movement Trio No. 1 in B flat, Op. 29, was influenced by his admiration for Beethoven, Wagner, and Liszt, and uses the same cyclical style as is found in Franck's own D minor Symphony (1886 - 1888).

The Ouverture of d'Indy's Trio opens with a romantic theme repeated five times, followed by an antipode of the first theme repeated four times, and closes with a false recapitulation. Between each thematic repetition, brief episodes exist. The Divertissement movement takes the notes of the first theme of the first movement and uses them for the theme of the second movement, which has an ABACA form. In the "Chant Elégiaque," the piano plays a melody likewise based upon the first four notes of the main theme in the first movement; here the motif appears in half-note chords under a separate melody performed by the cello and clarinet. The Final refers back to all the previous movements, directly and indirectly, through the use of several cyclical and repetitive techniques, in order to unify the entire work.

Even though d'Indy's chamber music was not nearly as interesting and complex as his orchestral music, the Trio can easily occupy a listener's attention with rhythmic surprises, such as different time signatures for the two hands of the piano and augmentation of the first movement's main theme through a change in time signatures. In addition to allowing Franck's influence to be heard in his music, d'Indy paid homage to his teacher by writing his biography in 1906.

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