After four years under wraps, the Music of the Spheres – a Destiny symphony – has leaked. The composers are pleased!
Late in 2013, Bungie composer Marty O’Donnell completed a masterpiece: Together with Michael Salvatori and Paul McCartney (yes, the Paul McCartney), he created the Music of the Spheres – a symphony in 8 movements that was to be the soundtrack for all Destiny titles in the coming years.
However, it was never released in its entirety.
Until now! Because through anonymous leakers, it was spread on social media at Christmas, on December 25, 2017, so you can now listen to it in full. We embed the YouTube version here:
Why was Music of the Spheres never released?
Behind the scenes of Destiny’s development, O’Donnell clashed with Activision. This dispute is well known as the case went to court.
The reason: Although O’Donnell had been Bungie’s house composer for years, already wrote the Halo music and had been working on the Destiny symphony “Music of the Spheres” for a long time, Activision chose to use its own music for the Destiny E3 trailer in 2013 instead of O’Donnell’s music.
Activision created the trailer itself and used its own music. For O’Donnell, this was a sign that Bungie was no longer the “brotherhood” it used to be, that Activision as a publisher was interfering too much in the creative process, and that as a development studio they were losing their independence.
This was followed by internal skirmishes, legal disputes over company shares, and it was even alleged that O’Donnell placed his personal interest in releasing the Destiny soundtrack over the interests of the company.
Ultimately, O’Donnell was infamously fired. The “Music of the Spheres” has never been released in the form it was intended – the rights remain with Bungie, and they have decided not to release the work in its entirety. Instead, they only use parts of the symphony repeatedly for promotional purposes, and individual pieces can also be found in the game.
As a result: In public, no one knows how the symphony “Music of the Spheres” sounds in its entirety. O’Donnell is far from happy about this. He has publicly stated several times – ultimately encouraging people to spread the symphony.
Via Twitter, he wrote in November that he gave away nearly 100 copies of Music of the Spheres (MotS) years ago when he was still Audio Director at Bungie. He does not have the authority to grant these people permission to share the work. However, no one in the world can stop him from giving people his blessing to do so. He added the hashtag #NeverForgetMotS.
O’Donnell is now happy that the world can finally hear his work
In June 2017, we reported on a cool story: A teenager with autism managed, after 430 days of meticulous detective work, to reconstruct the symphony in large parts.
O’Donnell was very pleased about this. He wrote that it was a fantastic job that corresponds to about 83% of the original. Nevertheless, he hopes that one day the complete work will be published – along with the missing 17%.
This day has now come on December 25, 2017. The leak was published by OS_Epsilon in the Reddit forum. The copy was discovered by a user named Tlohtzin Espinosa. The leak is indeed the original, as the latest tweet from O’Donnell on December 25 shows:
Kotaku reached out to O’Donnell via email to have him comment on this leak. He replied that he is now relieved and happy. He was with his wife at his 93-year-old father’s place to tell him that people can finally hear his work. Because over two years ago, O’Donnell tweeted that his father asked him when MotS would finally be released, but that decision was not up to him:
The leak has now made Christmas 2017 even nicer for them. Years ago, O’Donnell is quoted as saying, his mother, who loved MotS, passed away and never understood why the symphony was not released.
He ends his statement via Kotaku with the statement that he does not know who brought his work to the public, but those people have his blessing.
By the way: These are the individual parts of the symphony, with each part dedicated to a celestial body (and the last part to the Traveler):
- The Path – The Moon
- The Union – Mercury
- The Ruin – Venus
- The Tribulation – The Sun
- The Rose – Mars
- The Ecstasy – Jupiter
- The Prison – Saturn
- The Hope – The Traveler
After just a few seconds, Destiny veterans will recognize the sounds from the Destiny universe:
What do you think of the symphony?
