In the mid-90s, I spent a good chunk of time playing a computer game called Logic Quest. It was all puzzles and mazes, knights and castles, and I loved it. Except… in retrospect I may have loved the music more than the game.
Fast-forward 20 years or so, and I was sitting in the audience for a concert by my friends in Seven Times Salt. Imagine my surprise when they begin playing one of the tunes that I knew from the game! So this got me thinking that if one of the songs from the game was a legitimate piece of early music, perhaps some of the other ones were as well!
Now that pretty much the rest of my season has been canceled due to the pandemic, I’ve had some time to research these pieces. With the help of my good friends Alastair Thompson and Daniel Meyers, I’ve started a new (Logic) quest to identify all 7 of the main themes. It turns out that whoever designed the music for this game was definitely into early music!
Here’s installment one: first the version from the game, and then the actual tune - Carmans Whistle, as set by William Byrd in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book!