Thy Kingdom Come

A follow-up and companion piece to Remington's ever-popular Prelude to Paradise, Thy Kingdom Come is a bright & sparkling new work for percussion orchestra that merges the Swedish hymn How Great Thou Art with original ideas, resulting in a joyous celebration.

Program Notes

When I began writing Prelude to Paradise in 2010, I knew that I would not be able to tell the full story of the Book of Revelation in one piece. The broad perception of the book is that it only depicts the apocalypse and the end-times, and while that is predominantly featured, the last two chapters of the book are a very uplifting and joyful portrayal of the city of God descending from a new Heaven onto a new earth following God's victory over all things unholy.

While conceptualizing Thy Kingdom Come, the initial sketches began to take on a reverent, hymnal tone, and at the recommendation of my mentor, Dr. Brian West, I decided to incorporate a traditional hymn that would be easily recognizable. After exploring numerous possibilities, I settled on the classic Swedish hymn written by Carl Boberg in 1885, O Store Gud (more commonly known by its English counterpart, How Great Thou Art), which was deeply meaningful to me having spent two years living in Sweden working with a postgraduate research group at the time that I was writing Prelude. The inspiration for Boberg's work came as he was walk-ing home from church one day when a storm appeared on the horizon that quickly brought about powerful thunder and lightning so he had to run home, but once the storm was over he opened his window looking out to the sea where he saw a rainbow over the bay and he could hear church bells in the distance.

Although this piece is not meant to tell Boberg's story or chronicle the final chapters of the Revelation, there are elements from each that can be heard throughout. The number 12 plays a significant role in the Revela-tion (12 gates, 12 angels, 12 tribes of Israel, 12 apostles, 12 foundations, 12 pearls, 12 crops of fruit on the tree of life) as well as in our daily lives (12 months in a year, 12 hours on a clock, 12 pitches in a musical octave, 12 constellations of the zodiac, 12 hues of the color wheel) and therefore the piece is primarily metered in 12/8 and a quick 3/4 subdivided by sixteenth notes (12 per bar). The E-flat octatonic tonality (alternating half-steps and whole-steps) utilized in Prelude was intended to characterize the fight between Heaven and Hell, right and wrong, good and evil, and since that piece was mostly representing evil, I chose to mainly use A Lydian and A-Major as the tri-tone opposite key center and the "brightest" modes to represent the goodness of Heaven for this piece. In Revelation, the city of God "had a great, high wall with twelve gates…three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west," and as the piece begins, each cardi-nal direction is illustrated aurally by alternating between the different tonal centers of A, C, Eb and F# locat-ed at each polar axis around the Circle of 4ths/5ths, which coordinates with the positions of each direction. The flowing "River of Life" described in Revelation is symbolized by undulating octatonic scales and accented by the crashing sounds of thunder and lightning from Boberg's piece, which quickly subsides and gives way to a quiet moment of calm reflection before leading to a celebratory and jubilant return of a familiar melodic structure. As the piece comes to a close, the hymn dominantly prevails soaring above pulsing rhythms and swift scalar runs that precede the triumphant finale embellished with the resonant ringing of bells and chimes in keeping with the final chapter of Revelation where "...there will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. And they will reign for ever and ever."

-J.R.

PASIC 2022 Preview

Grade Level: Advanced
Copyright: 2023
Number of Players: 13+
Duration: 9:30

Sample PDFs

• Thy_Kingdom_Come.pdf

Instrumentation

Glockenspiel
Crotales [2 octaves] & Xylophone (+bass bow, tub of water)
Vibraphone 1
Vibraphone 2
Chimes (+ individual chimes [E-flat, G-sharp], vibraphone bars [A5, C5, D5, E5, F5], bass bow, tuba of water)

Marimba 1 [5-octave] (+ bass bow)
Marimba 2 [5-octave] (+ bass bow)
Marimba 3 [5-octave] (+ bass bow)
Marimba 4 [5-octave] (+ bass bow)
Timpani [4-5 drums]

Percussion 1: Kick Drum, Ribbon Crasher, Bell Tree, Suspended Cymbal, China Cymbal, Tam-Tam
Percussion 2: 3 Concert Toms, Snare Drum, Hi-Hat, Suspended Cymbal
Percussion 3: Tam-Tam, China Cymbal, Triangle, Floor Tom, Suspended Cymbal, Sizzle Cymbal, Brake Drum, Chains, Infinity Chimes

Optional Altar Bells
Optional Hand Bells