A teenager has apparently managed to compile the planned soundtrack for Destiny, “Music of the Spheres,” by Marty O’Donnell over 430 days of meticulous detective work. Activision has actually kept it under wraps.
Recently, Bungie told the origin story of Destiny: It was quite sunny and great, there was ice cream and barbecue.
But we know: The actual production of Destiny did not go that smoothly. Behind the scenes, egos clashed and the project “Destiny” took its toll.
One case even went to court, it was the case of Martin “Marty” O’Donnell. He was Bungie’s in-house composer for a long time, composing the music for Halo. He planned a symphony for Destiny, titled “Music of the Spheres.”
O’Donnell’s Symphony “Music of the Spheres” was meant to become the soundtrack for Destiny
O’Donnell worked on this symphony for a long time. He collaborated with Paul McCartney, recording it with an orchestra: It was meant to be the soundtrack for the massive Destiny franchise.
O’Donnell wanted to release it as a “stand-alone” work. However, when Activision chose different music for the E3 trailer and showed no intention of releasing “Music of the Spheres” separately, O’Donnell got into a dispute with Activision and his colleagues and was ultimately disgracefully fired after many skirmishes.
“Music of the Spheres” has never been released in the form it was intended – the rights still belong to Bungie, who have decided not to release the work in its entirety. Instead, they use parts of the symphony repeatedly for promotional purposes – individual pieces can also be found in the game.
No one publicly knows how the symphony “Music of the Spheres” sounds in its entirety. O’Donnell is, to put it mildly, quite upset about the whole situation.
Meticulous Detective Work
Eurogamer now reports in a lengthy article that a 16-year-old boy from Atlanta, USA, has managed, through meticulous detective work, to largely reconstruct this work. The boy describes himself as a high-functioning autistic, suffers from Tourette’s syndrome, has difficulties in school, and took about 430 days to piece together the symphony. A Spaniard he met on Reddit helped him.
The boy is an enthusiastic Destiny superfan and inspired by O’Donnell’s works, whom he regards as his musical hero. For him, Destiny and the community around it are extremely important. If he wasn’t working on the “Music of the Spheres – Definitive Edition” during those 430 days, he was playing Destiny.
Because he loves Destiny so much and was looking for a project, he took on this outrageous acoustic detective work to reconstruct “Music of the Spheres” from various sources. He found many clues in a 59-page document that emerged from the lawsuit between O’Donnell and Bungie.
Composer O’Donnell says, this is fantastic work and about 83% accurate. O’Donnell hopes, although he finds the boy’s work impressive, that it will still be possible to release the complete work as it was once intended – with the remaining 17%. This is surely also in Paul McCartney’s interest.
The boy wants to return to school and get his diploma. Recently, he has been homeschooled due to some issues. Once he achieves this, he dreams of a career as a video game music composer.
The entire article about the impressive work the boy has done to salvage this piece of Destiny history, you can read here in English at Eurogamer.
For those interested in the story of the dispute between O’Donnell and his former friends at Bungie:
Destiny: The lawsuit provides insights into the development history – 5 parts planned, 2 postponed
