Loyset Compère, like his contemporary Josquin Desprez, composed well in most of the diverse musical genres known to his time. His "audience" (through publications and manuscript transmissions) knew him primarily as a chanson composer, whose song oeuvre gracefully embraced both the conservative Franco-Burgundian traditions and the newer, more "Italianate" style. The motets, likewise, demonstrate stylistic elements in turn of the "Northern" contrapuntal efforts and the fresher, more chordal and text-dominated music more common to musicians writing in Italy. The motet O bone Jesu presents an extraordinary mixture: it appears to be set over a cantus firmus, and begins with syntactic imitation, but its flavor abruptly shifts, halfway through, to the chordal variety.

The net effect of the motet, however, is far from the jaunty Frottola. The text, addressed in intimately relational terms to Jesus Himself, contemplates the death of the speaker, commending the spirit into Christ's hands. The melodic character of the tenor voice gives a nearly strophic, chant-like appearance; this chant, though unidentified, echoes the modal intonations of liturgical Psalmody. The first three phrases—two opening with simple and clearly patterned imitation, the third with Josquinian paired duos—each build to a four-voiced climax, marked by a fermata. The texture then becomes unremittingly homophonic, as often is the case in motets for the Elevation of the Host in the Milanese tradition of the Motetti missales. The harmonic structure, due in large part to the melody in the tenor, remains focussed on the tonic G and the modally related chord of C, with one dramatic exception. Namely, for the climactic invocation "O Messias!" Compère ventures an exotic plagal cadence to a distant E sonority. The formal highlighting of the text's cadences, with the second half's syllabic declamation and certain moments, such as this, of clearly rhetorical composition, all point to a mature and vibrant textual impetus for the music. This forward-looking ethos (and the autumnal cast to the text) have suggested a composition date late in Compère's life.

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