I transformed orbital rotation data into rhythmic units by converting the number of Earth days each planet takes to rotate around the star into beats. In The Flowering Desert, this rhythmic material appears throughout the whole piece (Figures 7 and 8), mainly approximated to their closest quaver or semiquaver as follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A more faithful transformation is used in Scene 2, however. This scene features the Mother Star as an endless process of nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium[16]. As this process is what ultimately holds together the planetary system, the combined rotation of all the planets in the system is used to define musically the star. The character of the Mother Star is, in consequence, depicted as a musical process (that could also be endless)[17]. By using a more precise transformation, I embrace rhythmic figures such as quintuplets, which, in a long musical process, create different rhythmic combinations, differentiating the Mother Star from the other rhythmical transformations, and thus defining the character[18].

Table 3

Table 4

Orbital rotations

Similarly, I also transformed the star’s own rotation (3.295 days) into a rhythmic unit (3.33 beats), a gesture that appears predominantly in The Flowering Desert in Scenes 1, 2[19] and 3, and that is also connected to the character of the Mother Star (Figure 9).

Figure 9

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