Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales

[2] The earliest printed collection of music devoted to a single composer, the Misse Josquin published by Ottaviano Petrucci in 1502, begins with this famous work.

The opening Kyrie of Josquin's mass contains consecutive mensuration canons based on each phrase of the L'homme armé tune, with the tenor leading each and the other voices entering in turn.

[8] The last of the three repetitions of the Agnus Dei, the section that closes the mass, is the longest, and is accompanied by a direction in the score: "Clama ne cesses" ("cry without ceasing", from Isaiah 58:1), which in this context means to sing the tune without any of the rests.

The length, and the sustained notes of the cantus firmus, refer both to the "cry for mercy" aspect of the Agnus Dei text, which cries to the Lamb of God to take away the sins of the world, and to the trumpet motif and text "On a fait partout crier" from the original L'homme armé tune, calling the listeners to arms.

[6] In addition to the canonic complexities, Josquin adds variety by beginning the L'homme armé tune on a successively higher note in each section (and also in the third Agnus Dei), one for each of the six notes in the natural hexachord (thus the title, "voces musicales", or solmization syllables, ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la).