Alexander Agricola's chansons stand on a stylistic cusp. On the one hand, he favored three-voiced compositions in the old formes fixes: the rondeau, ballade, bergerette, and virelai. On the other hand, he applied a very progressive ethos to these venerable forms, both in contrapuntal procedure and in sensitivity to his text. J'ay beau huer, for instance, resolutely follows the formal structure of prior generations. Its text, a rondeau quatrain, speaks in conventional (if rather violent) terms of the courtly lover's rejection by his lady. Agricola's chanson exactly mirrors the poetic structure with a cadence after each of the four lines, as well as a strong medial cadence on the secondary harmonic center that divides the music into two clear sections. This allows the singer(s) to follow the refrain form of the poem, AbaAabAB. Only the upper voice carries text (another bow to convention), though complete vocal performance remains quite possible. Ten manuscript sources contain surviving copies of this popular song. The composer, however, charges his conventional form with "advanced" contrapuntal writing and with subtly powerful embodiment of the sense of his text. From the very opening, the importance of exact melodic imitation between the voices is evident. The second and fourth text incipits also feature imitation among all three voices, and the superius and tenor voices maintain a very close, imitative relationship throughout. Within the stringency of that relationship, Agricola presents brilliant reflections of the text. The very opening motif surges upward; its angular melody suggests the shafts of love that have assaulted and wounded the lover. Yet he claims helplessness, and the meandering quality of Agricola's melodies (especially the reluctance of the second phrase to cadence) may embody his frustration. Despite the lover's claim that his only possible action is to complain, however, "No one can believe [his] faith"; Agricola reflects his relentless pursuit in the close, imitative relationship between the upper voices. The final line of the refrain, in fact, is sung in canon, with the tenor pursuing at an extremely short time interval.

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