EB Roman Music Preview (Musica Romana)
Greetings Europa Barbarorum fans.
Today we have another big announcement for the mod!
Musica Romana is allowing Europa Barbarorum the use of some of the songs from their albums Mesomedes and Symphonia Panica, in addition to work from their upcoming album, Pugnate! They will be heard while playing as the Roman faction, and will primarily impact the campaign or strat map portion of the game, though one of their songs is well suited for the battle map also. Their music, like that of Prehistoric Music Ireland for the barbarian music, will be used in addition to the wonderful soundtrack we already have, composed and performed by Morgan Casey and Nick Wylie.
In addition to the announcement itself, we are excited to be able to provide you with a lot more detail about the group and its work on Roman Music through a special interview with its director.
Musica Romana's WebsiteTeleklos: We are very glad to be talking today with Susanna Rühling, founder and director of Musica Romana, to give you all a little more information on the group and how they strive to recreate ancient Roman music in a modern setting. Thanks for taking the time to join us Susanna!
Susanna: Thank you and Salvete!
Teleklos: I would first like to ask how the group came together. Did you all know each other already or did people come together from different places to form the group?
Susanna: Well, yes, because people who are in this field are very rare. We have an archaeologist, diplomad musicians, musicologists, ethnologists, and teachers in our group. I myself have an archaeology M.A.
Teleklos: We list above in the announcement the names and locations of all the group members and it is easy to see that many of them are from different cities, my question is how often each year do you meet to perform or record? And also, is this a full-time job or do most of the group members have other jobs outside of the group?
Susanna: For two of us it's a full-time job, because beside concerts, recordings, rehearsals, and building the instruments, we still need to research a lot and to publish it. Other members work in museums or as teachers. I guess we play (public and private) around 30 to 40 concerts a year.
Teleklos: That's a lot of performances! Ok, now let's move on to the ancient part!
I think many of our fans would be very interested in hearing a little about how we know today what we know about ancient Roman music. Is it mostly from archaeology or ancient texts or surviving remnants in any other cultures' music?
Susanna:It's more clear than medieval music to most of us. For example, few people know that there was an ancient form of notation and we luckily have nearly 70 pieces of music that survived, in various states, from ancient Greece and Rome. Mostly they are presented as Greek music as the texts are always in ancient Greek, but for example Mesoemedes of Crete was a kithara-player and composor at Hadrian´s court in the 2nd century AD, and he left some pieces of music for us to play with melody, rhythm, and text. Metrics of the Latin and Greek languages make the rhythm clearer to us too, a thing that is not so clear for Medieval music. We also have a lot of archaeological finds of ancient instruments, such as the aulos or flutes, so that we can make pretty exact replicas of it, imitating the original sound. Lot of pictures, for example from Pompeii, show us the art of playing (the technique) and texts tell us stories about events, music, and musicians. There is so much to study...;-)
Teleklos: A follow-up question on that: how do you take that knowledge and turn it into the music itself then? To be able to create this "new" music then that so closely resembles what ancient Roman music must have been like?
Susanna:Beside the original pieces we have lots of texts that deal with tuning and rhythms of ancient musical practices. If we reconstruct music or make new compositions, we try to be as close as possible to this. Sometimes if we play a replica of an archaeological find, we try to make up pieces that bring the most sounds to life that it can produce.
Teleklos: Your newest release, Pugnate!, is due out next month. Can you tell us if it has a particular theme and what inspired it?
Susanna:We have reconstructed a water-organ, so the CD deals with the place and events it was heard most in antiquity...Arena and Gladiators ;-)
Teleklos: I also was very interested to hear that you know Simon O'Dwyer and Phil Conyngham from Prehistoric Music Ireland, who have helped us by providing some reconstructions of ancient music for our Celtic groups. Have you worked with them before or performed with them?
Susanna:Well, yes. We are both in the ISGMA "International Study Grup on Music Archaeology" which is set in the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut, Berlin, Germany. We got to know each other in those meetings. Sometimes in the evenings we would all make music together, so you might here an ancient Bronze-Age Irish Horn together with a Roman Aulos and a Medival Harp. Phil has also visit my husband and me for some concerts here in Germany and gave some courses in playing the Didgeridoo; he is a such a good and creative player!
Teleklos: What do you have on the schedule next, work on another album or many performances? And what inspires you to keep creating "new recreations" of ancient Roman music?
Susanna:Performances basically, maybe a small album at the end of the year. A passion for performing is our motor ;-)
Teleklos: Well, thanks Susanna for giving us your time in an interview designed for our fans' particular interests! I hope you will let us know when your next release is out and what Musica Romana is doing in the future - our team members and fans are spread out all over the world, so if you are performing anywhere please drop by and let us know - I bet some of us would be able to make it to some of your performances (and if anyone does, please make sure to tell them that you are an EB fan! ;-) ).
Susanna:Thank you a lot and Valete!
Musica Romana's homepage (a large site that is currently undergoing a major reworking)
We will definitely be letting everyone know when their website is up and running again. Here are links directly to their record label (Emmuty), where you can still obtain the Symphonia Panica CD (I believe the Mesomedes one is currently sold out).
How do I hear some of their music?
While we are not publicly posting samples here, you can hear some of the music that will be in EB on their myspace.com page. Out of the samples you can hear there, XVIII is one that you will hear in EB for sure.
Musica Romana's MySpace page with samples
On their MySpace page, you can also find a list of their upcoming performances. If you are able to see them in person, please take the opportunity to go!:
May 17 2008 Römerfest - n.N./t.b.c. Gießen (Deutschland/Germany), Hessen
May 24 2008 Römerfest - Konzert n.N./t.b.c. Tarragona (Spanien/Spain)
May 25 2008 Römerfest - Konzert n.N./t.b.c. Tarragona (Spanien/Spain)
Aug 3 2008 Aktionstag - Saalburgmuseum Bad Homburg (Deutschland/Germany), Hessen
Sep 13 2008 Ausstellung - Pommersches Landesmuseum Greifswald (Deutschland/Germany), Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Sep 14 2008 Römerfest - Stadtmuseum Bergkamen Bergkamen (Deutschland/Germany), Nordrhein-Westfalen
Oct 18 2008 Erlebnistag - Museum für Archäologie Frauenfeld (Schweiz/Switzerland)
Oct 19 2008 Erlebnistag - Museum für Urgeschichte Zug (Schweiz/Switzerland)
Now to the part where EB fans can help!
Until now, Musica Romana has focused their exposure in Europe, but in advance of this announcement, we asked if they had a distributor in the U.S. They currently do not, but would be willing to talk with any interested parties. So if you frequent a business that specializes in ancient replicas, serving reenactment communities, or something else similar, who has an online store, and who would be interested in becoming a distributor for Musica Romana in North America, please contact us and we will put you in direct contact with Susanna and M.R.
Note: I will add that Musica Romana does **not** get any money or support in any way from their work that is sold online in mp3 format illegally, so we would ask our fans not to purchase any of their music in mp3 format from any sites. There is no need to futher discuss the matter here, other than to say that whatever the legality of the sites in their own countries, that Musica Romana is not supported or paid in any way from them, so we would ask our fans not to obtain their music that way, but to contact Emmuty Records or talk with them about possible distributors in your country.
Thanks for your continued interest in Europa Barbarorum and for keeping up with the progress we are still making on it. The Musica Romana music will be included in the next release for EB (i.e., for EB on RTW), and will be used as we port to M2TW as well. We can't wait to get the music onto your computers, as well as a lot of other new things for our next release!
Since some areas where these items which have been posted include large images, we appreciate your restraint from quoting full-size images.
As always, if you have questions or comments, the best place to post them is here, where the EB team is most active:
Europa Barbarorum ORG forum
Europa Barbarorum TWC forum
We give special thanks to ImageShack that provides us with a simple, foolproof, and free way to show you all these pictures each preview.
Have a great day!
Sincerely,
The Europa Barbarorum team.
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