Musical Arrangements

Arrangements of Playford Dance Tunes, in PDF format. Note that the arrangement of each piece is credited to John Chandler. That's actually me; think of it as a pen name. Anyway, the top line of each piece was written by John Playford (1623-1686), and the rest by me.

• Branle of Poitou
• Chestnut
• Clog Branle
• Fain I Would
• Female Sailor
• All in a Garden Green
• Gathering Peasecods
• Heart's Ease
• Hyde Park
• Mayden Lane
• Merry Merry Milke Maids

"Shield My Kinsmen" was (and still is) a hit SCA song by Karen Kahan, known also as Wyndreth Berginsdottir. I set it to a five-part choral arrangement (in PDF format).

"Evensong" is a plaintive song about longing for home by Ben Tucker, known also as Owen Alun. I set it to a four-part choral arrangement (in PDF format).

"Haul on the Oars" is a parodistic Viking sea shanty by Karyn Schmidt, known also as Guðrun Spákona. I set it to a five-part choral arrangement (in PDF format).

"Brambles" (PDF format) is an original little ditty I whipped up for a friend's scary Lovecraft-inspired film. I modified some lyrics I found in Tommy Thumb's Pretty Song Book (published 1744) and did the melody from scratch.

"Bardic" Works

Okay, for the record, I'm not a real bard. Real bards studied for years and knew over a hundred stories of their culture's history and values. What we in the SCA do nowadays is more accurately called "folk singing", although we call it bardic because it hearkens back to those elder days we're trying to recreate. Anyway, I've been involved in that, and here are some of my works.

• "Fly with the Griffon/When I was Young" The first page has the three-part round, "Fly with the Griffon," which can be used as an accompaniment to "When I was Young," the lyrics of which can be found on the second page.

Recordings

This is the spot that you can find all of the recordings I've made or had made. No guarantees are made about the quality, but hey, they're free.

• The Northshield Choir Concert at WW XIII. It's tough to call this my work, since the concert was really a product of the hard work of all the voices you hear singing on it. The file is a zip file containing MP3 files recorded by Duke Corin du Soleil. There were five pieces performed at the concert, in the following order:
  • Stella Splendens (anonymous, trans. Ben Tucker)
  • Evensong (Ben Tucker, arr. John Chandler)
  • Haul on the Oars (Karyn Schmidt, arr. John Chandler)
  • Shield My Kinsmen (Karen Kahan, arr. John Chandler)
  • Fly with the Griffon/When I was Young (John Chandler)