Flute Quartet (Piccolo, 2 C Flutes, Alto Flute)

The three-body problem is to take the initial positions and velocities of three point masses orbiting each other in space and then to calculate their subsequent trajectories using Newton's laws of motion and Newton's law of universal gravitation. Unlike the two-body problem, the three-body problem has no general closed-form solution, meaning there is no equation that always solves it. When three bodies orbit each other, the resulting dynamical system is chaotic for most initial conditions. Because there are no solvable equations for most three-body systems, the only way to predict the motions of the bodies is to estimate them using a 3 voice fugue.