The mind has a limited capacity to perceive counterpoint; we can apparently follow no more than four parts at a time. What, then, happens when we hear a piece for 12 parts? Other composers, modern and ancient, have experimented with the effects of polyphonic overload. On the extreme ends are perhaps Thomas Tallis (1505 - 1580), with his 40-part Spem in alium, and, more recently, Györgi Ligeti (b. 1923), who wrote works for string orchestras in which every player has a distinct part. The technical term for the result is micropolyphony—a polyphony too minutely busy for us to perceive the distinct parts with any clarity, resulting in shimmering patterns of movement that is like watching the kinetic play of sunlight over the surface of a deep lake.

At its most dense, Brumel's 12-part mass setting stretches just beyond the point of intelligibility. It gets so rich that an aural illusion often occurs, making the music sound like it's running backwards. One of the loveliest effects, heard even in eight-part writing, is the sound of disembodied consonants, whispered into the huge emptiness of the cathedral; because the music is so blurred we sometimes hear the attacks at the start of syllables. His lines are ambitious, florid, and highly energetic, considered a culmination of late Gothic style. They come briefly floating our of the glorious confusion, only to be drawn irresistibly back in.

Like many outstanding composers, Brumel goes so far beyond the manner of his time that his music can scarcely be taken as representative of his contemporaries' practice, a fact which this mass makes especially clear. Among other differences, he uses an abundance of thirds, and treats these as stable consonances—something not at all striking to our modern ears, but quite progressive in his day. The cadential C chord of the Christe, for example, has six Es sounding simultaneously.

Brumel divided his choir into four three-voice groups, each with its own characteristic vocal register. At the center of this, ordering the music, is a beautiful set of canonic elaborations of the cantus firmus chant Et ecce terrae motus. Brumel doesn't restrict the voices to any narrow registers; they not only cross each other within groups, but often cross into the range of the other groups. The bass even rises higher than the tenors at certain points. Octave leaps are a mainstay of the melodies. Overall, the ranges he demands of the singers are so extreme that traditional vocal technique is frequently insufficient, forcing performers to use falsettos and considerable changes in vocal color.

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