Timothy Schmidt - The Kingdom Suite: Deluxe Edition

A compilation of all projects involving The Kingdom Suite: the original score and its themes that comprise the original album; a solo harp piece using several themes from the suite; and a concert edition that expands the first two movements into a performance-ready structure.

The Kingdom Suite: A Score (2017-18)

Orchestra and Guitar | ca. 23 minutes | Audio

I. Ruin | II. Remnant | III. Destiny | IV. Sacrifice

This four-movement suite is the result of my exercise scoring a series of animations by YouTube personality Jordan Maron ("CaptainSparklez"). Dubbed the "Fallen Kingdom Tetralogy," these animations were intended to serve merely as music videos for pop songs by Maron and his collaborators. However, I noticed that they actually tell a rather sophisticated and cinematic story, with each one presenting both its own narrative arc and a chapter of an overall coming-of-age story. This was material ripe for scoring! So I set to work, crafting underscore around themes for important characters, locations, and action sequences that intertwine as the story unfolds. This focus on thematic material resulted in some of my most creative work to date, spawning several other versions of the music and leaving me with tunes that continue to resurface in later pieces of mine.

The Kingdom Suite: Themes (2018)

Orchestra and Guitar | ca. 14.5 minutes | Audio

These are the 12 core themes that make up nearly two-thirds of my Kingdom Suite. For the most part, they are literal excerpts from the original score, though there are occasionally tweaks to instrumentation and structure to facilitate greater independence between themes. Some of the themes also never make a complete appearance in the Suite; here they are presented in unbroken form.

Nostalgia: A Kingdom in Ruin (2018)

Harp | ca. 2 minutes | Audio | Score

Shortly after I completed the Kingdom Suite and its themes in early 2018, a harpist I met at a composition workshop the year prior reached out to me with a request to contribute a harp piece to a compilation project she was working on at the time. Naturally, my first thought went to adapting the suite, and it wasn't that much of a stretch - the timbrally similar acoustic guitar used frequently throughout could easily serve as foundational material here. Indeed, the "Village" theme from the suite, anchored by guitar, translates especially well to the harp; the "King" and "Sacri'ce" themes also find a home in this rather nostalgic entry to the Kingdom Suite collection.

The Kingdom Suite: Concert Edition (2019)

Orchestra and Harp | ca. 23 minutes | Audio | Score

Part I | Part II

This concert version of my Kingdom Suite includes modifications that make it more suitable for live performance. Most significant changes to the first movement are the tightening of the structure into a more defined AAB form and the replacement of acoustic guitar with harp for all its parts.

Most significant changes to the second movement are the reworking of the quiet, slow sections that open and divide the work into primarily brass chorales and more synergy between musical ideas of the first and second halves. The result is a structure more closely resembling a binary or ABAC form.

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