Thy Kingdom Come by Jacob Remington

The TCU Percussion Orchestra, conducted by Brian A. West, performs "Thy Kingdom Come" by Jacob Remington live at PASIC 2022 on 11-10-22. Posted with permission.

THY KINGDOM COME (2022)
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 walking 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 Revelation (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 cardinal direction is illustrated aurally by alternating
between the different tonal centers of A, C, Eb and F# located 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.”
-Notes by the composer