Walter Frye

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

Life

Nothing in particular is known about his life. Possibly he is identical to a Walter Cantor who worked at Ely Cathedral between 1443 and 1466 , and he may have been the Walter Frye who joined the London Parish Clerks in 1456. He may also have been Walter Frye, who left a will in Canterbury in 1474 .

music

Most of Frye's music has been handed down in manuscripts from mainland Europe, which led to the thesis that he spent a lot of time there, but his works are stylistically closer to other English composers (such as John Dunstable or John Hothby ) than the music of Burgundy School , the most notable contemporary movement on the continent. One reason that is sometimes given for the survival of his music in sources on 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 simply be passed on anonymously. Little English music of the era has survived, as most of it was destroyed during the dissolution of the English monasteries that Henry VIII had carried out between 1536 and 1540.

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 that, oddly enough, appears on three contemporary paintings, even with sheet music. Some of his shorter pieces achieved extraordinary fame in distant lands such as Italy , southern Germany , Bohemia and what is now Austria , including the Rondeau Tout a Par Moy and the ballad So ys emprentid . These songs have often been copied, rearranged, and plagiarized , and appear in numerous collections in various forms.

Frye's most important historical contributions, however, were his masses, as 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 with its full three- tone soundscape and isorhythmic techniques used occasionally . He contrasts textures in full four-part set with passages for only two voices, which would become a characteristic sound for the polyphony of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Three of his masses have been passed down more or less completely: the four-part Missa Flos Regalis , Missa Nobilis et Pulchra (three-part) and the Missa Sum Trinitati (also three-part).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stanley Boorman, et al .:  Sources, MS .. In: Grove Music Online (English; subscription required).
personal data
SURNAME Frye, Walter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer of the early Renaissance
DATE OF BIRTH 14th century or 15th century
DATE OF DEATH around 1474