HAMILTON MULTIPHONIC QUINTET

(After the Irish astronomer and mathematician William Rowan Hamilton)

A Hamiltonian process is a series of combinations of objects with only one difference between them (one object more or one object less), and all of whose combinations can be exhausted without repeating twice the same one. A process with five elements (quintet) offers 32 combinations :

Ex :
I – flute plays 0 – flute does not play
0 – oboe does not play 0 - oboe does not play
0 - clarinet does not play 0 - clarinet does not play
I – horn plays I - horn plays
I – bassoon plays I - bassoon plays etc....

These 32 combinations create musical objects conceived as sequences linked to each other, that are varied from one cycle to another (a cycle = 32 combinations).

The idea is to elaborate in the course of the piece a language that is represented by sound objects, by transformation, and to deform each object that appears at the same point in the cycle. The music perpetually transforms itself, but in a progressive way.

In the long term directionality becomes very general, or very short within a given object.
A certain fixity can exist within a cycle if the objects presented are not very differentiated ; the combinations, associated by opposites, by pairs, up to five, lead, two-thirds of the way through the piece, to silent periods situated always at the same place in the cycle ( in each longer an longer cycle).
This is due to the fact that a combination IIIII gives the opposite 00000, that is, silence.
It is apparent that in this case the general form is more the result of a rigorous overall process within which it is possible to vary objects at great liberty.

D. Cohen