Walter Frye

Walter Frye ( † around 1474 ) was an English composer of the early Renaissance.

Life

Nothing is known about his life certain. Maybe it's the same as a " Walter Cantor ", who worked at the Ely Cathedral 1443-1466, and he may have been that Walter Frye, of the London Parish Clerks joined in 1456. He may have been the Walter Frye, who left in 1474 in Canterbury a will.

Music

The vast majority of Frye's music survives in manuscripts of mainland Europe, which led to the hypothesis that he had spent much time there, but are his works other English composers ( such as John Dunstable and John Hothby ) stylistically closer than the music of the Burgundian School, the most notable contemporary movement on the continent. One reason that is sometimes given for the survival of his music sources in the continent is that the few surviving English manuscripts from the 15th century rarely mention the names of the composers, which is why a good part of his music can be simply passed on anonymously. Only little English music of the era has been preserved, because most of it was during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, which allowed Henry VIII to perform 1536-1540, destroyed.

Frye composed masses, motets and songs, including ballads and a single Rondeau. All of his surviving works are vocal music, and his most famous composition is an Ave Regina, a motet, which, oddly enough, appears on three contemporary paintings, even with notes. Some of his shorter pieces acquired extraordinary fame in far away countries such as Italy, South Germany, Bohemia, and the present-day Austria, including the rondeau Tout a par Moy and the ballad So ys emprentid. These songs were often copied, re-arranged and plagiarized, and appear in numerous collections in various forms.

However, Frye's historically most important contributions were his masses, because they influenced the music of Jacob Obrecht and Antoine Busnoys. Frye's style in his masses was typical of English music of his time, the Contenance Angloise full triad -based sound and occasionally used isorhythmical techniques. He contrasted textures in full four -part harmony with passages for only two votes, which should be a characteristic sound for the polyphony of the late 15th and the early 16th century. Three of his masses have survived more or less complete: the four-voice Missa Flos Regalis, Missa Nobilis et pulchra ( three parts ) and the Missa sum Trinitati ( also in three parts ).