The Game of Kings combines the poetry of Ezra Pound with the renowned chess play of Paul Morphy. Pound's poem, Dogmatic Statement Concerning the Game of Chess brings a high level of drama to the game, which to those outside of its realm may seem bland or even tedious. This poetry is set over harmonies inspired by the moves of the famous chess game between Paul Morphy and Karl II of Brunswick and Isouard de Vauvenargues, now most often referred to as The Opera Game, as it took place in a Parisian opera house during a performance of Norma.

Each move of a game of chess is notated by a letter, representing the file or column that a piece moves to, followed by a number, representing the rank or row that the piece moves to. Using this chess notation, I converted the moves of the Opera Game into musical notation by using the letter of each move to represent a fundamental note in the harmony (b here representing B-flat, with the implication of "h" representing B-natural, although there are no actual moves on the h-file in this game), and the numbers representing an interval off of that fundamental, either diatonic or chromatic, and either ascending or descending. The result was a harmonic framework that is neither tonal nor atonal, but entirely rooted in the brilliance of Morphy's play, and my own sonic interpretation of the drama of Pound's poetry.