In 1992 I published an article analysing the style of Walter Frye, a composer whose music spoke to me with a strong and distinctive voice. At that point very little of Frye's music had been recorded, so my experience of it was almost entirely ‘in the mind’. Several years later, Christopher Page, in an act of characteristic kindness, engineered for me the beginning of a relationship with Hyperion Records that continues to this day, and that has allowed me, via my ensemble the Binchois Consort, to put my conviction in Frye's music into practice. More than a quarter of a century on, and with recordings of all Frye's Masses in our back catalogue, I would like in this article to revisit his style with the benefit of hindsight sharpened by the experience of performance.

I should precede the observations that follow with a clear caveat: in offering them I make no claim to a ‘correct’ approach to performing the passages I shall discuss, much less to having ‘discovered’ Frye's musical thought processes. Others will see (and indeed have now seen) different interpretative possibilities in this music; and Frye's own approach remains locked in a past whose musical priorities were as redolent of their time as ours will ultimately prove to be of our own. But in approaching this topic here I am reminded of an important lesson I learned from the dedicatee of this volume: that however unattainable the sounds of the past may be, we can nevertheless, in evoking them today, open up possibilities of understanding which would otherwise have remained closed to us. In the end it is inevitably the sound of this music – however broadly conceived – that underpins our desire to engage with it, and that opens up heuristic possibilities to do so.

Writing about performances cannot but be an exercise in incompletion, requiring as it does phenomena beyond itself for proper intelligibility.

The organ constituted a prominent and lavishly supported voice for the church from at least the late fourteenth century. In tracing the various building projects from that time until the mid-sixteenth century, this chapter reveals its importance in the organisation’s self-image: as an elaboration of the ritual, a demonstration of institutional pride, and as an instrument of display and propaganda. The level of detail provided by the continuous run of accounts is exceptional, and affords historically important insight into developments in instrument design over a 150-year period, from a single Blockwerk into a more sophisticated instrument with various keyboards, registrations and chests. The study also provides an exceptional level of detail on the complex process of scoping, ordering, building-work and quality control that went into the installation of an organ in a large church building in the later Middle Ages.

This chapter looks at the upper echelon of power in the church of St Omer, examining the system of patronage that controlled and regulated it and the ways in which that control affected the careers of musicians. It does this by means of a close examination of the careers of three well-placed individuals in the church’s governing chapter. Its primary focus is on Nicolas Rembert, canon and later dean, and a former singer in St Peter’s, Rome. Rembert was a consummate church politician who exercised his legal and political skill in Rome to provide canonries for prominent singers and support music by means of income from a St Omer canonry suppressed through his influence. His period as dean also saw the bringing-in of important musical figures including the copyist and celebrated composer Jean Mouton. The other two central figures in the chapter, both members of the Burgundian court chapel, show the close relationship with the ruling regional dynasty and the contrasting effects it could have on church personnel and politics.

This first chapter introduces the primary source materials that make historical study of an institution possible, going on to sketch the patterns and ranks of employment - from choirboy, through chaplain, vicar, canon, dean and provost - that shape the functions of a collegiate church such as St Omer. It goes on paint a picture of the history and development of the town of Saint-Omer – its geography, population, politics and trade – to give a larger social and historical context to the story of the large collegiate church which constitutes the rest of the book.

This chapter addresses the backgrounds of choirboys of the era and the support network offered by their mother church. Their progress through the ranks, including the peculiarly St-Omer rank of ‘escotier’ aimed at maturing choirboys of limited means, leads the reader through to achievement of their training as vicars, chaplains, masters of the boys and, in a few significant cases, endowed canonries and even the lofty position of cantor. As elsewhere, musical skill could lead to high achievement. Patronage through university training was also an expected part of career support. The highest, or at least most noticeable, talent could lead to impressment into the choirs of the ruling dynasty, in this case that of Burgundy-Habsburg, and glittering careers. The role of direct patronage in such cases of the Habsburgs Mary of Hungary and Charles V is illustrated via the cases of individual St-Omer boys.

Key to the training of the boys was their master, who was responsible for their upkeep as well as their musical training. Men in such positions had typically themselves been through choirboy training and were highly accomplished musicians. The most notable choirmaster in the book’s period of interest, Jean Thorion, a native of Saint-Omer, offers a particularly astonishing example of the international draw of northern maîtrise training. In his youth, Thorion had been employed far away from his homeland in Florence, where he worked as a singer and tutor at the priory of the SS Annunziata. Here he was patronised directly by the Medici family, and Lorenzo Il Magnifico in particular. Apparently the most significant role within the northern maîtrise of this period was that occupied by the tenorist, in which role no one was more glittering than the former tenorist of King Ferrante of Naples, Grigoire Bourgois, a central figure in St Omer for a quarter of a century. The chapter also addresses the copying of polyphonic music, and most importantly the role in this capacity of the celebrated composer Jean Mouton, a native of the region.

Attention in this final chapter is directed to the private passions of church personnel as revealed in the executors’ accounts of deceased canons, and in particular Jacques de Houchin, remarkable for his bibliophilic sophistication and (apparently) private music-making. Houchin’s book collection at death ran to more than 300 volumes, including large numbers of classical texts, making him one of the most significant private bibliophiles of his age. He also possessed a large number of music books and musical instruments. Centred on this one man’s proclivities, the chapter paints a picture of private music-making within the confines of the church and its cloister, involving canons, vicars and choirboys.

The maîtrise (or choir school) was the crucible of late medieval polyphony and chant: a first stepping stone on the progress to ecclesiastical careers and, more specifically, to musical careers within the church. It was also the seedbed for most composers of note in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Hence the training and social context it provided are crucial to understanding the shape and role of music in the period. The chapter addresses both the progress in and the reasons – theological and practical – for the cultivation of choirboys, and especially the changes of perspective that led to the vastly increased investment in their training and accoutrements. A signal element here is their role in private foundations paid for by individuals (especially church canons) for the welfare of their souls, and in the increasing elaboration of such foundations including chant and, particularly, polyphony.

If the organ was the ‘inwardly facing’ voice of the church, the bells directed its message out to the larger world. Bells gave powerful voice to the church’s self-image, and also offered opportunities for lavish private provision for the posthumous support of the souls of their endowers. Personified by means of names and ‘baptised’ before use, their quasi-human status, coupled with their range, gave them a particular potency in the medieval soundscape. It is therefore unsurprising that bells were instruments of power not only for the churches in which they were housed, but also for the town over whose airspace they resounded, exercising control, discipline and security. As a result, they were often sites of contested power between church and town and hence reveal significant detail concerning power structures at the time.