Even when he wrote in a miniature form, the fertility of Alexander Agricola's musical mind and the subtlety of his craft were evident. Ay je rien fet, one of the simplest and most direct chansons of his ouvre, spotlights his particular blend of varietas and unity as they play on a small stage. The chanson text to Ay je rien fet contains a mere four lines of French, each line an ingenuous query to an apparently disdainful Beloved. Has the speaker done anything to deserve her reproach? Agricola sets this text in a direct and conservative manner; his structural clarity and harmonic sweetness is reminiscent of an earlier generation of chanson composers, such as Binchois and Busnois. Two of his three voices mark the opening of each text line with clear imitation and unequivocal cadences conclude each phrase. Yet, far from constraining his composition, the unified structural approach allows Agricola to forge subtle contrasts between the phrases, which together infuse the chanson with subtle drama. He divides the first phrase into two cadentially marked units, with complementary melodic gestures. He likewise gives two parts to the second phrase, though the concluding cadence is less certain, and the phrase is truncated. In the third, vocal imitation takes place at a much closer time interval, and the phrasal cadence arrives importunately early. The conclusion stretches across a more extensive melisma, as if a simple gesture of pathos at the speaker's solitary condition.

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