The Missa Pange lingua is a musical setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by Franco-Flemish composer Josquin des Prez, probably dating from around 1515, near the end of his life.
It was not formally published until 1539 by Hans Ott in Nuremberg, although manuscript sources dating from Josquin's lifetime contain the work.
[3] The hymn on which the mass is based is the famous Pange Lingua Gloriosi, by Thomas Aquinas, which is used for the Vespers of Corpus Christi, and which is also sung during the veneration of the Blessed Sacrament.
The work is tightly organized, with almost all of the melodic material drawn from the source hymn, and from a few subsidiary motifs which appear near the beginning of the mass.
[6] Like most musical settings of the mass Ordinary, it is in six parts: Most of the movements begin with literal quotations from the Pange lingua hymn, but the entire tune does not appear until near the end, in the last section of the Agnus Dei, when the superius (the highest voice) sings it in its entirety, in long notes, as though Josquin were switching back to the cantus-firmus style of the middle 15th century.