Against the thriving artistic environment of the courts of Renaissance Europe, musicians on an international stage paid one another homage (and, incidentally, advertised their own skills) by writing musical "parodies" on one another's compositions. The late medieval practice of basing polyphonic motets and Mass movements upon a plainchant melody was followed by the borrowing of secular melodies. As composers competed with one another to show greater ingenuity with the same preexistent material, a single pop chanson could spawn dozens of "cover" arrangements and clever recompositions. Examples of these huge musical families include the famous tradition of L'homme armé Masses, a rich group of pieces based on Hayne van Ghizeghem's chanson De tous biens plaine, and the nearly 40 pieces based upon Johannes Ockeghem's rondeau Fors seulement l'attente. Pierre de la Rue contributed two contrasting arrangements of the latter.

Three collections of secular music, now found in Florence, Regensburg, and St. Gall, testify to the wide dissemination of la Rue's four-voiced setting of Fors seulement. The piece was likely intended as an instrumental work instead of a vocal chanson, as it omits the medial cadence required by the poetic structure of the model. Also, no source includes the complete text. La Rue takes the soprano voice of Ockeghem's chanson transposed down a fifth as cantus firmus in his alto voice. The other three voices erect a highly syncopated imitative texture that tends to smother Ockeghem's melody, leaving it perhaps for the musicians' comprehension alone. Frequent suspensions and other characteristic dissonances throughout tease the harmonies forward. The composer also exploits a poignant deceptive cadence to E flat in the bass several times, including one prolonged instance just before the piece's end.

A second arrangement of the popular tune by la Rue, for five voices this time, survives in a choirbook illuminated (and personally signed) by Hapsburg artist Petrus Alamire. In the five-voiced setting, la Rue again uses the highest voice of Ockeghem's chanson, giving it verbatim in his top voice; this setting also begins by quoting another of Ockeghem's voices in the bass. He complicates the setting by using his favorite musical device: a strict canon between the lowest two voices. The melodic writing of the second setting is much more "vocal," with relative equality among the five voices, and the borrowed tune thus shines more clearly. The piece also neatly divides into two parts, following the poetic form and allowing a proper vocal performance. It does not, however, abandon the finely wrought counterpoint and pungent dissonance of the four-voiced setting.

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