Though John Bull sang and directed English church choirs, the keyboard was his principal instrument. He played the organ both for Hereford Cathedral and the Royal Chapel and was known as one of the best players of the "virginal" alive. His keyboard music survives in several of the most important sources of his lifetime, including the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book and Parthenia, the first printed collection of virginal music ever; other copies of his compositions traveled as far as Vienna. He wrote in all the fashionable dance styles of the Elizabethan and Jacobean age, and occasionally stepped out to write music "in imitation of nature." His rollicking and jaunty number, The King's Hunt, is just such a piece—mimicking through tones the sounds and sights of the Royal Hunt of King James I. Three copies of the piece survive: one in the Vienna organ tablature, one in the "Fitzwilliam" collection, and one in a manuscript possibly written by Bull himself.

In The King's Hunt, Bull grafts a scintillating surface onto a very simple structure. At its core, The King's Hunt is nothing but a series of musical variations on a "ground bass," a harmonic pattern that recurs throughout the piece. In its first incarnation, the ground is heard at the start of the piece, with a full chordal setting evocative of the royal party on horseback. Successive strains of The King's Hunt employ more or less brilliant patterns of fingerwork, interspersed with echoes of horncalls and the regular trotting of the huntsmen's ponies. Small melodies are chased around from hand to hand. At times, the melodic action seems mired around single pitches, but quickly the hunt resumes its course. The final strain contains an exuberant and virtuosic left-hand passage that seems to embody the final breathtaking moments of the chase.

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