A Note on the Destiny: Music of the Spheres Prequel Album Release

Hey everyone! You may know me or not, but my name is Owen Spence. More commonly known as "u/OS_Epsilon" on Reddit. Starting last Tuesday some crazy things have happened regarding Music of the Spheres, a body of musical work composed by Martin "Marty" O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and Sir Paul McCartney.

There's a whole story here, so go grab a drink, and sit down for a bit. Let's chat.

So, What IS Music of the Spheres?

To start, I feel we should answer this question for those who don't know. What exactly IS Music of the Spheres?

Music of the Spheres is the name given to an album of music written in 2012 by Marty O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori, and Sir Paul McCartney. It had 8 tracks.

1. The Path (Moon)
2. The Union (Mercury)
3. The Ruin (Venus)
4. The Tribulation (Sun)
5. The Rose (Mars)
6. The Ecstasy (Jupiter)
7. The Prison (Saturn)
8. The Hope (Earth)

The music totalled 48 minutes and 22 seconds long. Each piece was attributed to a planet in order of the ancient concept "Musica Universalis" which literally means "universal music". This concept basically said the 7 "wandering stars" that could be seen with the naked eye moved in harmony around each other, similar to how music works. As such this is the foundation of Music of the Spheres. Another important influence of the music is the concept of day/night pairs and how that works with a piece's key. For instance, The Path starts out in C Major, goes to C Minor, then back to C Major. Then the next piece picks up where the cycle left off in that piece's key, starting with D Minor and going to D Major. This cycle is essentially repeated throughout all 48 minutes: a piece has a day/night pattern until it's over and the next piece picks up where the last left off.

The music was also the foundation of the entire Destiny franchise's upcoming soundtracks. It's easy to see inspiration from Music of the Spheres in many tracks released in the soundtracks for Destiny. The example I always use it that it's like the Star Wars theme. It's a memorable and iconic piece of music that every other piece on the Star Wars soundtrack refers back to. You hear adaptations of it throughout the movies as the main theme of the franchise. Even though it's only a few minutes long, it's still used to this day for every new Star Wars movie. It was Marty and Mike's most brilliant work, and was set to be released first in early 2013, then in August 2014. Neither of those dates happened.

Legal Disputes

At the 2013 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3), Bungie was getting ready to show of Destiny for the first time as an actual game to sell. It was crucial that Bungie make great first impressions with its audience. The lights dimmed, the trailer came on, and Marty O'Donnell was shocked to see that there wasn't a snippet of Music of the Spheres in the trailer. It wasn't Bungie music at all, actually. Publisher Activision came in and replaced O'Donnell's audio with their own, and O'Donnell was furious. He took to Twitter to say that the music was not his, and that tweet became the beginning of the end for him. From there on, Bungie and O'Donnell had creative differences that led to O'Donnell being terminated on April 11th, 2014. From there, a messy lawsuit happened and the byproduct of that is that Music of the Spheres never came out as intended by O'Donnell.

Music of the Fans

I've always followed news of Marty's work very closely. When I first learned of Music of the Spheres I began a two-and-a-half year journey that ultimately culminated in people distributing the real work.

The Music of the Spheres team then went right to work on creating a content package that would contain all of the assets missing from the Christmas 2017 release, including sheet music, poetry by Cambridge-based author Malcolm Guite, and artwork.

We talked to Guite about the poetry and went over his contract. After obtaining the supplementary poetry, we worked for months with Guite to make sure his role in the project had a work that would emulate a real release. The poems, titled "Seven Heavens, Seven Hells; a Sequence for the Spheres" by Guite, is an amazing read and I hope for all to read it someday. It is noteworthy that even if Bungie does not publish them, Guite's contract entitles him to an eventual release, so regardless of Bungie's plans, expect to read it someday in its entirety.

We also did manage to obtain a FLAC copy of Music of the Spheres but refrained from posting it online as we assumed that would be the final nail in our coffin with our relationship with Bungie. If Bungie cannot be the sole source for the FLACs, then they lose their ability to really sell it to people who already had the leaked copies.

We planned to release sheet music, MIDIs, and XMLs to the Path and the Union for musicians in the community, as well as the poetry videos for The Moon and Mercury on May 29th, 2018. We steadily working towards that when last Tuesday, April 24, 2017, we were sent legal notice by Bungie to shut down our project.

The End of the Beginning

We fully complied with this order by Bungie. I removed Music of the Spheres from the internet and deleted my original Reddit account that same night.

Members of the MOTS team have known that Bungie has had plans to release Music of the Spheres since at least Destiny: The Taken King so we were honestly surprised a cease and desist took this long. During the following dialogue with Bungie and their lawyers, it became clear they were finally going through with these plans.

Then after that, I had a phone call with O'Donnell, and I told him what happened and he later made a tweet about Music of the Spheres being taken down. This stirred a panic on the DestinyTheGame subreddit, and I was forced to comment. After all, these were the people who had given me everything and I felt if they were this panicked I had to say something.

I created a temporary account called u/OS_EpsilonTEMP to break the news: There were reasons behind this and people should not panic. Unsurprisingly, as it wasn't an anti-Bungie message I was called out as a "Bungie shill" and many of my comments were downvoted into oblivion for telling the truth. Part of me accepts this, the other part can't believe that after all this time, over two years of me telling them everything first, and even getting into legal trouble for servicing the community, they still would not give me the benefit of the doubt.

Then after all of this backlash, Cozmo broke the news to everyone: Music of the Spheres is getting released officially in the near future. From there, O'Donnell replied surprised.

I would like to say, as someone who spent much time on this, this is the best possible outcome. This means we can get FLAC versions, and perhaps a physical CD or Vinyl release. Also on the table now is an official sheet music release and Guite's poetry. I cannot say this enough, this is the best-case-scenario.

Not The Last of Us Yet

I'd like to say, this is not the last you'll see of the MOTS team. We have plans to do other things both related and not related to Music of the Spheres. Granted, we have to wait until the official release to do anything, so expect some other projects from us in the meantime. You'll hear from us when you hear from Bungie.

Also, Bungie did not force me to delete my Reddit account. I did that 100% of my own free will. Why? So I can finally start rebranding away from OS_Epsilon to a new name, Atlyx.

Thank you for reading. If you have any questions about what's going on with Music of the Spheres, feel free to reach out to me over Twitter. My direct messages are open for anyone.

I'd be happy to clarify this story with any content creators that wish to make videos or stories on it.

Thanks everyone!

~Owen