"But then of course, I would have to take a snippet that I'd read and give it to a classicist and say, “Is this right? Is this translation correct?” Because with things, especially things like the Bible, the smallest incorrect translation makes a massive difference. So you have to be careful about that. So yeah, these classicists were really essential to the project."
How is the actual street music of Rome different from the ceremonial music? How did you find this structure to be different from today's music?
"Because...I was working within the constraints of the record label...my pieces are the same length as you would want a commercial piece now to be. So I suspect that the pieces went on longer. You can look back at other periods of time and the structures of those [pieces of music], especially those that were written for specific uses.
"So for example, Telemann is a Baroque composer who wrote a series called Tafelmusik, “music for the table.” And it's basically music to be played while people are eating. So each of the pieces are quite long, they're about 12 minutes each, which was the time he thought it would take to eat the course of food...So I suspect the structure of Roman music would have been similar but longer. So I didn't want to get into a verse-chorus scenario because obviously, I don't know if that happened. It's unlikely because that's quite a modern construct. There was a dance track, and the last section is repeatable so that you can if you were, you know, doing a film soundtrack and you wanted that to go on and on and on until you faded out, you could do that."
The rest of your album runs through the parties and the other aspects of Roman music.
"Yeah, so the first one is in an inn, called “Copa Surisca,” and it's really about the innkeeper dancing for clients. So there's quite a big beat to that one, the percussion is quite important in that one. There's a lullaby, there's the poem by Sulpicia, which is the Roman equivalent of “At Last,” and that's kind of a love song. And there's another song towards the end of the album where I've used graffiti from one of the walls in Pompeii. So I tried really hard to kind of keep the lyrics as proper as I could do. And then that was one less thing to worry about keeping authentic.
"That lullaby was slightly different from the other tracks because harmony is one of the things that I think was a bit different [in Roman times]. So I tried really hard to keep the interval of a third out of the album except in the lullaby because it would have been a mother singing to their children, it would have been sweet sounding. But every other track as you've got kind of contrary motion with harmony and it's never got straight thirds moving as a modern track would."
How do you think that your background in music helped you with creating the album, as opposed to a background in the classics?
"I think it's the first time that an album has been recreated from a musician's point of view, and so I thought I could get a classicist to come in and decipher their language for me, and then I was able to build [from there] and then you get a real musicians point of view. I thought that would, perhaps, lead to more classicists and musicians working together, because that's what really needs to happen to make the discipline grow. I think there was an awful lot of people brought together to bring this album to fruition that wasn't just me at a desk, it was me and classicists and musicians and Plato specialists and people who showed the choir how to actually say the words and conversational Latin.