Though fewer of his masses survive than motets, Orlande de Lassus' contribution to the central genre of Catholic worship music remains substantial. Throughout his long tenure in the chapel of Duke Albrecht V of Bavaria, he needed to compose polyphonic masses on a regular basis, and he apparently did so with great musical facility. The majority of his masses are so-called "parodies" of earlier compositions, in which the composer borrows melodies and even sometimes complete passages of music from a pre-existing composition. In a case such as Lassus' joyous eight-voiced Missa Bell' Amfirit'altera (published posthumously in 1610), the model may not be found; the grace of his borrowing procedure may be seen nonetheless.

Even without specific music to compare, shadows of the unknown madrigal that must have been Lassus' model play across the surface of every movement. It seems unlikely that the original madrigal was in eight voices, but many madrigals of Lassus and his contemporaries played with various combinations of five-voiced textures in ways that could inform an expansion into eight voices. Thus, even passages of the most resplendent polychoral interplay, such as the second Kyrie or the passage et unam sanctam Catholicam ecclesiam, must preserve some of the model's textures. In addition, clear melodic echoes of the model weave in and out of the Missa Bell' Amfirit'altera. The procedures of "parody" mass composition were common enough to be enumerated in an earlier treatise by Cerone. Even when Lassus seems to vary from these common techniques, his model casts its shadow on the mass. The opening Kyrie, for instance, should begin with the opening motive of the model; Lassus may have slightly concealed the madrigal's opening melody—a stepwise rising fourth—in the second choir, but it remains clearly heard in this and other movements. Other musical features that stand out from the mass could derive either from similarly effective moments in the model (such as the contrasting rising melody Lassus treats in such loving counterpoint to begin the Sanctus) or from the fertile imagination of the composer (such as the quartet Crucifixus and harmonic shifts such as those at Domine fili unigenite Jesu Christe and per quem omnia facta sunt).

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