Lassus was nothing if not a master of multiple styles. From bawdy, dramatic, romantic, or pastoral secular compositions to compelling church music, he was a master of European languages as well as a master of styles, setting with equal facility texts in French, German, Italian, and Latin. The intense color and atmosphere of this particular French chanson almost seem to presage musical Impressionism. The text describes the cold and somber night covering the world in darkness and bringing sleep, and then the day bringing light to the world again. Lassus does some incredible word-painting here. The hushed entry portrays the darkness of the night spreading, and the delicate descending scale on "couler" (to flow), describing the descent of sleep, is particularly apt and graceful. And, as one might expect, the music grows louder and brighter, almost explosively by the penultimate phrase, "with its varied light, this immense universe," and finishes with a consonance at the line "is adorned and completed."

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