Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Developer Blog – Ensemble Galatia

TaleWorlds Entertainment’s sandbox RPG Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord will feature a soundtrack composed and performed by Ensemble Galatia, an authentic medieval music band. With that in mind, the game’s latest developer blog shares a music sample and follows it up with an extensive Q&A with the band. Here’s the sample:

And a few questions from the massive Q&A:

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Music is a vital part of our lives, and it’s one of the most powerful tools for conveying emotions and feelings – especially in visual media, like films and video games. A good score connects you to the setting as a whole and grounds you to the scene; it evokes certain feelings and images, moves you to feel in a certain way. But that’s not all: music is one of the very few things that you never really forget – and it’s always connected in your brain with the feelings you had when you listened to it. And so, in many years from now, if you happen to hear a certain melody you will be brought back to that moment, to that memory. That is why we take really seriously the music of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – and why we have tried to be as authentic as possible, asking a true medieval music band to compose and play music for the game. And it’s not a trivial task – it takes artistic talent, but also lots of research and hard work… But let’s leave that for them to explain in their own words in a special Q&A!

How did the band form?

Individually, our interest in medieval music goes way back, but the idea of forming a band to perform this type of music first developed in 2003. Kaan Bahadır and Selçuk Dalar joined together to dig through an archive of old songs. They picked a few songs from the archive which they could play with some plucked and wind instruments that they own and started tryouts as a duo. Thus formed Ensemble Galatia! In 2004, Serkan Özçifçi joined on stringed instruments and in 2005, Senem Gökçe Okullu on vocals. Gökhan Bulut joined in 2006 and Nevin Şahin joined in 2011, which formed the current line-up of the band. Additionally, there were many musician friends who worked with us and helped our progress but parted ways in time.

What kinds of medieval music (styles) do you focus on?

It’s extremely complicated to categorise all the music composed throughout European over millennia. Still, we think summarising our field of study in two layers won’t be too far off the mark.

We can define the first layer as “Chronological”. We are focusing on two eras historians define as “High Middle Ages” (11. – 13. Centuries) and “Late Middle Ages” (13. – 15. Centuries).

The second layer is more “Thematic”. Across all of the Middle Ages, there were roughly two branches of music, one is “Liturgical” (e.g. Church music), and other is “Secular” (e.g. Folk music). We prefer to work mostly on Secular music of this era.

As a band, we are interested more in the music that impacted on the common medieval citizen’s everyday life, instead of institutional ceremonial music. Sometimes it’s dance songs from palaces, love songs from Andalusia, songs of knights, wandering bards or songs compiled by a king and dedicated to his holies, or songs of exiles spread all over medieval Europe. These medieval songs embodied with us as tales where anything is possible. I think that’s how we pick what we play!

What attracted you to this style of music?

The charm of medieval music is hidden in this period’s extraordinary cultural diversity. At the end of the Antique period, the Roman Empire was able to build up a vast cultural realm that spread from the British Isles to North Africa, from Spain to Caspian Sea. Following the break-up of the empire, the fall of Western Rome, the dispersal of central authority to local kingdoms and fiefdoms enabled rich and pluralist structures where indigenous themes stepped up and local languages were written down. And this variety went further when Muslim Arabs conquered Syria, Egypt and Northern Africa from the Romans, Spain from Visigoths, Sicily and parts of Southern Italy from Ostrogoths, and even further still when Magyars and Vikings came down from the north. At this time, the bards of northern pagans, ancient Roman and Greek heritage, vibrant Arab poetry and Berber music from North Africa were all living together across Europe. This interaction provided a basis for a very unique musical liveliness so uncommon up until this point in history. After the Crusades, Turkish, Persian and other Middle-East involvement put a good measure on this diversity. So, in short, the magical and fabulous atmosphere of the Middle Ages is very attractive for sure, but we are most impressed by this cultural diversity.

Can you tell about some of the instruments that you use?

The musical instruments we use are mostly unfamiliar to anyone born into the musical world of the 21st Century. As with cultural elements, music evolves over time. This evolution is also reflected in musical instruments as form, timbre or material. Just like in biological evolution, the evolution of instruments relies on adaptation to new times, otherwise, it gets marginalised and squeezed into obscure music that lives on in small communities or ceases usage and vanishes altogether.

We use more than 20 instruments alternately, based on the region and period of the music we’re performing. Some of the instruments we use look familiar to modern ones as they are predecessors of the latter, while others look very unfamiliar. For example, one of our most used instruments, a “Vielle”, is similar to a modern viola, and a “Lute” looks quite like a guitar. However, listening to a kind of lap zither named “Psaltery”, a northern string “Tagelharpa” or a “Hurdy-Gurdy” with its interesting mechanics could be as curious as witnessing a sabretooth or a woolly mammoth alive! 🙂