Originally designed as a response to the rapidly changing creative world of 2020 amidst the unprecedented COVID disruptions; The Summer Chores was created as a motivational tool for home use over the summer months for students and teachers alike, the intension being that the performer plays all the parts to each piece while learning and experimenting how to record themselves, learn how to make a click-track, how to multi-track, mix, video-edit and more….
William Byrd was an English composer of the Renaissance. He wrote in many of the forms current in England at the time, including various types of sacred and secular polyphony, keyboard and consort music. What little music that was published was overwhelmingly choral, as keyboard music required printing techniques yet to be perfected. Musicians were used to copying instrumental music by hand into family ‘commonplace books’, while wealthier families employed a ‘scribe’ to do this. The Nevell family were a wealthy and powerful family and Lady Nevell’s Book was copied by one John Baldwin in 1591. It contained a number of Byrd pieces, including the descriptive suite The Battell. The Battell was probably written after 1588 when England was in a mood of national celebration after victory over the Spanish and French Armadas. The movement which Byrd calls Marche Before The Battell later became known as The Earl of Oxford’s March, written while Byrd was at the height of its powers.
