Survival of music from the period in England is sparse because most of it was destroyed during the dissolution of the Monasteries carried out between 1536 and 1540 by Henry VIII.
All of his surviving music is vocal, and his best-known composition is an Ave Regina, a motet which occurs, unusually, in three contemporary paintings, even including notation.
Some of his shorter pieces acquired an extraordinary fame in far-away areas, such as Italy, southern Germany, Bohemia and present-day Austria, including the rondeau Tout a par moy and the ballade So ys emprentid.
Frye's masses, however, were his most historically significant contribution, for they influenced the music of Jacob Obrecht and Antoine Busnois.
Frye's style in his masses was typical of English music of the period, the Contenance Angloise, using full triadic sonorities, and sometimes isorhythmic techniques; he contrasted full-voiced textures with passages for only two voices, which became a characteristic sound of the polyphony of the late 15th and early 16th centuries.