Helas mon dueil, a bergerette, has many stylistic characteristics that date it as a late piece in Dufay's oeuvre, the main one being that it unfolds quite cautiously, in such a way that every single note plays a role in the creation of the total effect. Earlier Dufay can be almost reckless in its flamboyant display of the composer's technical ingenuity and melodic resourcefulness. The bergerette is essentially an elaboration of the rondeau, with a more varied musical scheme that provides opportunity for a considerably greater expressive scope. Several of Dufay's late masterpieces of chanson composition are in this form excellent.

Here, a highly chromatic figure in the discantus at the start of the work sets a tone of anguished weariness that is maintained throughout without recourse to extreme dissonance. Instead, a highly economical, almost dense counterpoint plays itself out, its very terseness keeping the mood tense. Melodic material is frequently recycled through the voices in a non-imitative way, the same melodies having completely different contrapuntal functions depending on the voice that carries them.

Dufay also calls on an expanded vocal range, including beautiful, large leaps in the countertenor, to give the piece further momentum and color. The discantus line even descends well below the tenor at one point, appropriately on the words "nothing in the world could save me," creating a deep sense of desolation, which is quite surprising in a composer whose music tends to be beautifully unemotional. Helas mon dueil may in fact be among Dufay's very last songs, one of the few secular works he would have written during his final years in Cambrai. The approach of the end of his days may explain the depth of expression.

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