Walter Frye

[vers la flamme]

Can't seem to find a thread, or indeed much information at all, on the English early Renaissance composer, Walter Frye. I have the Hilliard Ensemble disc with his music. This is damn beautiful, melodious, sometimes transcendental music.

Is anyone listening to the music of Frye? Is his music anything like the English Renaissance composers who would come later, Tallis, Byrd, Tomkins, etc?

Anyway the Hilliard is a really good CD if anyone is curious. Might be a little too smooth for some.

[Mandryka]

 There are three great champions of Walter Frye's music on record. One is the The Hilliard Ensemble on that CD you mentioned, though I don't think they recorded any Frye elsewhere. Similarly  for The Ferrara Ensemble, who have a Frye dedicated recording, and that's it apart from one song.  But the big Frye advocate on record is The Binchois Consort, who have three CDs with substantial sacred works by Frye, one of them last year in fact. Other ensembles working in the field have released very little - a handful of songs max - or nothing at all.

Hilliard - Walter Frye
Binchois - Lily and Rose; Music for St Katherine; Marriage of England and Burgundy
Ferrara - Northerne Wynde

[vers la flamme]

There are three great champions of Walter Frye's music on record. One is the The Hilliard Ensemble on that CD you mentioned, though I don't think they recorded any Frye elsewhere. Similarly  for The Ferrara Ensemble, who have a Frye dedicated recording, and that's it apart from one song.  But the big Frye advocate on record is The Binchois Consort, who have three CDs with substantial sacred works by Frye, one of them last year in fact. Other ensembles working in the field have released very little - a handful of songs max - or nothing at all.

Hilliard - Walter Frye
Binchois - Lily and Rose; Music for St Katherine; Marriage of England and Burgundy
Ferrara - Northerne Wynde

Cool, thanks! I'll look into the Binchois.

Do you have any opinion about his music? I'm not well-versed enough in the idiom of Renaissance polyphony to make any judgment, but I find what I'm hearing to be beautiful.

[Mandryka]

   

I know two recordings of Walter Frye's Missa Flos Regalis, on CDs by Hilliard and Clerks' Group. I prefer Clerks' Group for two reasons. One is they tend to chose slower tempos, which lets me smell the roses. It would be unfair to say that Hilliard are chaotic by comparison, but the faster speeds makes the music feel more complex than my brain can take: the polyphonic textures feel more like a tangled ball of string. And second, Hilliard (as always) are dominated by their countertenor's voice, and although I like David James's voice it it is sometimes so present it gets on my nerves. The blend is less annoying from Clerks' group.

Both deliver small scale performances where you're aware of the character of each singer. Furthermore, both deliver rather prayerful performance, rapt. This may be due to the nature of the music, or it may be just one of many equally valid performance styles. I'm not sure.

[Mandryka]

I've rearranged the tracks to hear the Frye noble and beautiful mass Nobililis et Pulchra, I don't know if it's just my mood this rainy Tuesday afternoon, but the much of the music seems very melancholy and inward. Maybe he's a psychological composer, using music to paint dark ineffable moods.  It certainly is disturbingly expressive. I've always found Frye's church music challenging, not least this mass.

A  lot of the time it sounds as though they've put two singers on a voice, I wonder if there's a way of doing it which would create more texture variety - there's rhythm variety aplenty, but the textures sound a bit uniform. Maybe inevitable with three part music, maybe not.

In the booklet Kirkman and Philip Weller compare it to the anonymous Quem malignus spiritus mass I was listening to yesterday, but either my memory is completely fooling me or the similarities are so deep in the structure I missed them., I'll check later.

Another thing,  from memory so maybe not accurate - this sounds different from the exuberant three voice Frye mass Summe Trinitate that Kirkman recorded, on A Marriage of England and Burgundy. I don't just mean the mood, I mean the sound of the singers. I feel rather more attracted by the melancholy one at the moment!

[vers la flamme]

Cool, thanks for digging up those thoughts. I'm going to give the Missa Flos Regalis another listen later today with what you said in mind. I found some of his music to be rather dark and introverted as you say. I always appreciate when I can detect those kinds of currents in such ancient music. I love looking out for the links between past and present, and some things never change. Seriously, though, now I want to find one of those Binchois Consort CDs. I'll see if I can find something on ebay.

[Mandryka]

The anonymous mass Quem malignus spiritus which impressed me so much at the time, and indeed now going back to it, is here

[vers la flamme]

The anonymous mass Quem malignus spiritus which impressed me so much at the time, and indeed now going back to it, is here

So it sounds like, beyond Frye, the Binchois Consort is an ensemble worth checking out, eh? I'm curious, why did they break up the "Nobililis et Pulchra" mass on that Saint Katherine CD? Seems strange to me, unless there is some performance practice reasoning behind it. This Hilliard Ensemble disc breaks up the Missa Flos Regalis too, what gives?

Anyway I'm listening to the Missa Flos Regalis again with ordering altered to play each movement in succession. This is really wonderful music. I don't hear the "tangled ball of string" over-complex polyphony, more like all these disparate pieces falling into place. I seldom connect with Renaissance polyphony in such a personal way, but I seem to be with Frye, and I had a similar reaction when I first heard Dufay, for what it's worth. I ought to get more into the Hilliards. They seem to be interested in the same kind of connections between ancient and modern that so fascinate me, or at least this music sounds fresh and almost modern to my ears. A brilliant discovery for me. I'm glad I picked up this CD from my dad's record store the last time I was home.

[Mandryka]

A mass cycle consists of a musical setting of the "ordinaries" of the mass -- that's some or all of  Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Ita Missa Est. These things were pretty well always present when the mass was celebrated. But in practice the ordinaries were interleaved with "propers" -- things like the offertory, the introit, an alleluia etc. The propers would often change during the year.

On recordings there seem to be five ways of dealing with this.

1. Just skip the propers and sing the composed mass one "movement" after the other.
2. Chant the propers like it's a real eucharist, thus breaking up the polyphonic music with something very contrasting. This is how it would have often been done I guess.
3. Replace the propers with some sacred motets. I don't know if there was ever a real church tradition of this. 
4. Replace the propers with something instrumental. There is a real tradition of this in certain places at certain times.
5. Replace the propers with a secular song. That way you get an entertaining contrast. I'm not sure if there was a real tradition of this.

[vers la flamme]

A mass cycle consists of a musical setting of the "ordinaries" of the mass -- that's some or all of  Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Ita Missa Est. These things were pretty well always present when the mass was celebrated. But in practice the ordinaries were interleaved with "propers" -- things like the offertory, the introit, an alleluia etc. The propers would often change during the year.

On recordings there seem to be five ways of dealing with this.

1. Just skip the propers and sing the composed mass one "movement" after the other.
2. Chant the propers like it's a real eucharist, thus breaking up the polyphonic music with something very contrasting. This is how it would have often been done I guess.
3. Replace the propers with some sacred motets. I don't know if there was ever a real church tradition of this. 
4. Replace the propers with something instrumental. There is a real tradition of this in certain places at certain times.
5. Replace the propers with a secular song. That way you get an entertaining contrast. I'm not sure if there was a real tradition of this.

Ah I see you've updated your post. I was really confused at first. Makes sense now! Was this the tradition all throughout the renaissance, and all over? I would have thought different places would do different things.

So I take it the reason most recordings omit the (plainchant?) propers is to keep their recordings from being boring...? I would have expected that any "HIP-minded" directors would avoid your numbers 3 through 5 on the grounds of shaky historical basis, but I see these are perhaps the most common (after No.1...?)

[T. D.]

So it sounds like, beyond Frye, the Binchois Consort is an ensemble worth checking out, eh?

I have several Binchois Consort recordings on Hyperion - Josquin and his contemporaries, Busnois/Domarto, Dufay/Binchois, 2 x Dufay - and consider them well worth checking out.