PARALLEL CONVERGENCES

Parallel Convergences was commissioned by Speculum  Musicae, who gave the work its  premiere in New York City in  February, 1989. Aldo Moro's  oxymoronic phrase (used to  characterize the progress of  negotiations between Italy's 13 Communist and Christian  Democratic parties) seemed an apt  title for piece which both creates  continuities between apparently  irreconcilable materials and  principles, and dramatically  contrasts different versions of the  same thing. But while its materials are diverse and its stylistic range wide, it is neither a collage nor a postmodern  pastiche. For each of its sections begins with a similar (or parallel) convergence on a single pitch, and  develops gradually toward a crisis  whose subsidence prepares the  next convergence; and each such  section is a microcosm of the  whole. Thus the most surprising turns, twists, and juxtapositions  are governed by a form that is (in  another oxymoronic phrase)  rigidly organic.  ---George Edwards