The Missa Sine nomine is a setting of the Ordinary of the Mass by Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez.
Since its first appearance was in Ottaviano Petrucci's third book of Josquin's masses (Fossombrone, 1514), and since it then also appeared in later manuscript copies, it is presumed that it was relatively recently composed at the time of publication; in addition stylistic characteristics suggest it was a late work.
[1][2] Josquin wrote only two canonic masses, the Missa ad fugam and the Missa sine nomine; they seem to stand at opposite ends of his career, and in the latter work he seemed to revisit some of the compositional problems he tackled in his early work in order to solve them a different way.
[4] The movements generally become fuller in texture with faster note values as they progress, giving each a dramatic curve, and several end with ostinato patterns.
Not only is the mass indebted to Ockeghem through its use of elaborate canonic techniques, its modal ambiguity, and its avoidance of head-motifs to unify sections, but it directly quotes the lament Josquin wrote on Ockeghem's death – Nymphes des bois – in the et incarnatus section of the Credo, a part of the mass that Josquin often reserved for his most striking textural contrasts or effects.