[5] The titular piece on Adiemus – Songs of Sanctuary was originally composed for a Delta Air Lines TV commercial.
Additional vocals were provided by Mary Carewe on all but Dances of Time, which saw the introduction of the Finnish Adiemus Singers (who would later appear on Vocalise).
Extra vocals and the chorus effects were created by overdubbing multitracked recordings of the singers (in some cases up to 40 times) and varying the speed of the tape.
The Songs of Sanctuary orchestra consisted of a string section augmented by various ethnic percussion instruments, with occasional further additions such as bells, a recorder and a quena.
Jenkins added brass and woodwind for Cantata Mundi, and continued to add more diverse instruments such as acoustic guitar on later albums.
Jenkins follows conventions of tonality up to a point—his harmony is derived from gospel and African music, decorated with functional dissonances such as suspensions and with greater freedom of movement between loosely related key areas.
The sound of Adiemus is generally identified with new-age or Celtic music; The Eternal Knot is an explicitly Celtic-themed album that formed the sound-track for the S4C documentary The Celts.
[13] Released in 1996, and building on the style established in Adiemus: Songs of Sanctuary, Jenkins broadens his musical approach to Cantata Mundi by including instrumentation and techniques from Eastern Europe, Arabia, and Asia.
In addition to rich string orchestrations and vocals borrowing from world musical styles common to Adiemus, Jenkins adds the accompaniment of ethnic instruments such as the Uilleann pipes and Carnyx.
In contrast to Jenkins's past Adiemus compositions, several of the tracks in this album are arrangements or variations on existing classical works.
Additionally, the lyrics for some tracks are borrowed from religious texts or even the title of the piece rather than the invented phonetic language used exclusively in the preceding Adiemus albums.