The title is drawn from the closing lines of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude: “...time was not passing...it was turning in a circle.” This concept of cyclical time is a recurring obsession in my work. For this piece, I was particularly intrigued by the mirror-image nature of two pianos—instruments with identical timbres and vast ranges—which led me to structure the entire work around duplications, echoes, and repetitions.

I. Aureliano and José Arcadio, Aureliano and José Arcadio, Aureliano and José Arcadio

This movement represents the generational repetition found in the Buendía family, where the same names—and fates—reappear across a century. The music alternates between two distinct personas: the Aureliano sections are strict, calculating, and methodical, while the José Arcadio sections are forceful, wild, and unrestrained. As these sections repeat, they contract in duration and expand in complexity, finally culminating in a large-scale palindrome of the work’s opening gesture.

II. Double Montunos

The second movement shifts toward a purely musical duplication: the image of dueling salsa pianists. It is built upon montunos—the short, rhythmic vamps central to salsa piano playing. However, these "stock" figures are immediately distorted, reproduced at different speeds, or rhythmically warped. The montuno’s inherent nature as a repeating loop serves as the perfect vehicle for this scherzo-like exploration of duplication.

III. Du bleicher Geselle! / Cheshire Cat Grin

The finale explores the literary and musical figure of the Doppelgänger. It takes its foundation from Schubert’s haunting song Der Doppelgänger, specifically a repeating chord progression that bears an uncanny resemblance to Radiohead’s "Jigsaw Falling into Place." The title weaves together lyrics from both: Heine’s "Du bleicher Geselle!" (You pale comrade!) and the "Cheshire cat grin" of Thom Yorke’s lyrics.

The Schubertian passacaglia serves as a "blank canvas" onto which I project Radiohead-inspired textures and returning material from the first movement. In this final circle, the disparate worlds of 19th-century Romanticism, 21st-century rock, and Macondo finally collide.