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Join Dr James Cook (ECA Director of Research and Senior Lecturer in Early Music at the University of Edinburgh) to talk about the interplay between fantasy and "authenticity," especially considering the ways in which the composers work creatively to give an immersive and coherent soundworld, within the limits of what he terms an "aesthetic of authenticity." It explores the creative interplay between the "real" historical environment and that which is understood to be real in the popular consciousness, as well as the interconnected web of demands set by the medium, the interactive and narrative genres, and the historical setting.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) and the Aesthetics of Authenticity
Warhorse Studios’ award-winning action role-playing game Kingdom Come: Deliverance (2018) has—perhaps somewhat unkindly—been described as a “peasant simulator.” Nonetheless, “simulation” is a good description of the way in which its gameplay is conceived and framed, with a stated focus on historical accuracy and realism. This verisimilitude has been cited as having a noticeable cost in terms of accessibility for new players, with something of a steep learning curve required to master the game, but has also frequently been cited in positive reviews. The level of realism is indeed impressive. It extends not only to the need to eat, drink, and sleep, but also to the need to learn how to read (vernacular and Latin separately) if the player wishes to glean any information from written texts. But a focus on realism always brings with it challenges. The highly effective musical score of this game, written by Jan Valta and Adam Sporka, features an interactive and adaptive score, making use of a new engine developed specifically for the game called the Sequence Music Engine. There is already a neat tension here between the stated aim of historical fidelity and the modern expectation of an adaptive score; no preexistent “authentic” music can be used in this manner. As with all games, and indeed all screen media, composers and studios must work hard to balance authenticity to the medium and the genre with authenticity to the period. We expect fairly ubiquitous non-diegetic music in screen media—and its absence carries very particular semantics—but fifteenth-century Bohemia was conspicuous in its absence of invisible, itinerant symphony orchestras roaming its landscape.
Dr James Cook is ECA Director of Research and Senior Lecturer in Early Music at the University of Edinburgh where he also directors the newly founded Centre for Historical Reconstruction Research with Tanja Romankiewicz. James works on early music and is especially interested in music of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. He also works on the representation of history in popular media with a focus on TV, film, and video game.
James has published widely in both of these aspects. His first monograph was published in 2019, titled The Cyclic Mass: Anglo-Continental Exchange in the Fifteenth Century (Routledge). He has co-edited a number of books including Recomposing the Past: Representations of Early Music on Stage and Screen (Routledge, 2020); History as Fantasy in Music, Sound, Image, and Media (Routledge, 2024) and Manuscripts, Materiality, and Mobility. Essays on Late Medieval Music in Memory of Peter Wright (LIM, 2024), with a co-edited collection on the Trinity Collegiate Church, Edinburgh forthcoming. His two-volume set of critical editions of Masses between English and Continental Provenance for Early English Church Music is currently in press and his facsimile edition of the Carver choirbook is (over)due but imminent!
James has led a number of externally funded research projects, including the AHRC-funded Space, Place, Sound, and Memory and its impact follow-on, which has resulted in a permanent VR experience at the Chapel Royal in Linlithgow Palace and a commercial CD with the Binchois consort, and which won the prestigious Tam Dalyell prize. He has also led a project to produce a prosopography of musicians in pre-reformation Scotland, funded by the Carnegie Trust.
- Speaker
- Dr James Cook
- Hosted by
- University of Aberdeen
- Venue
- King's College
- Contact
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Please contact Christina Ballico on: christina.ballico@abdn.ac.uk to request the Microsoft Teams link.