Permutaciones
Premiered in May 1986 at the Guildhall Contemporary Music Festival, London by Hisako Tokue.
It was in this piece that Paredes first attempted to write a work combining ‘open’ and ‘closed’ structural forms: that is, music whose structure is partly determined by the composer, and partly left to the choice of the performer. The piece consists of seven sections; sections 2, 4, and 7 themselves consists of two alternate passages, only one of which is to be performed. The remaining sections are to be performed in the normal way.
While writing this piece, Paredes encountered by chance poems entitled Poesia Permutante by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortazar. These poems consist of a series of four-line stanzas designed to be read in any order. Because of the realities of grammar and syntax, the stanzas nevertheless form a larger poem which may be circular, but which always moves and develops in a distinct direction. This ideas mirrored Paredes’ own thoughts on composing alternative passages of music, each of which could fit equally validly into, as it were, fixed narrative elements.
– David Alberman