The Style of Walter Frye and an anonymous mass in Brussels, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, manuscript 5557
The Brussels manuscript 5557 is one of the most important sources of the later fifteenth century. Not only is it the one northern manuscript from the period to have survived largely intact, but it was apparently compiled for the chapel of no less a magnate than Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. Presiding over one of the most opulent courts of Europe, Charles was more than just a great patron of the arts: he was an active composer himself. The sophisticated taste of his establishment is reflected in the extraordinary quality of the music in the Brussels manuscript: great masses by Dufay and Regis rub shoulders with most of the surviving motets of Charles's great employee, Antoine Busnoys, while the original nucleus of the manuscript boasts a clutch of English masses rivalled only by that in Trent 93/90.