Orlando de Lassus wrote more than fifty parody masses (masses written with musical themes based on other works, typically shorter ones such as songs or motets), most of them, like this, in the Munich court. Strictly speaking, Church authorities had banned using worldly songs, but that apparently didn't overly concern de Lassus, even though by this time he had become much more contemplative and devout, even dourly so at times, and for this he used Clemens non Papa's exuberantly suggestive chanson "Entre vous filles." However, as was his practice, de Lassus used it mostly as a starting point for his own rhythmic and polyphonic patterns, rather than fully incorporating it.

While many of his masses, especially the ones written after 1570, are considered conscientious but uninspired compared to his motets, there are still moments in each that show the work of a master. In the Sanctus, he opens with a hushed and mystical polyphony, and then uses essentially chordal writing for the massed voices, in often repeated phrases, to evoke the image of the crowds acclaiming Jesus (the Biblical source of the text), and then returns to a contemplative mood, with the sopranos hovering above the slow-moving lower voices. While the Kyrie and Gloria are fairly standard, the Credo, with its frequent used of pseudo-polyphony (the different voices entering at different times on the chord's components) has a variety of striking musical textures, and the tranquillity of the "Dona nobis pacem" in the Agnus Dei movement is an impressive conclusion.

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