The image of Ockeghem as an esoteric composer of mysterious, difficult music has been common currency since the sixteenth century. Music histories, and accounts of the composer's work until fairly recently have all harped on this highly misleading idea, based primarily on two compositions, the canon Prenez sur moi, and the Missa Cuisvis Toni. The latter—a mass that can be sung in any mode, as per the title—has been especially notorious in spreading an unfair reputation for Ockeghem as a pedant. In fact, he's no more pedantic than Bach and a unprejudiced taste of his music, of splendid secular works like Qu'es mi vida, will dispel that idea like so much water evaporating in the sun.

Ockeghem didn't in fact compose all of the music here. As he often did, he takes preexisting material and adds music and colors them with new vivifying details that only could've come from him.

In this case, he's made an exquisite four-part work from a comparatively generic piece for three by Johannes Cornago, a Spanish composer active between 1455 and 1485. To Cornago's counterpoint, Ockeghem adds a structurally ornamental countertenor bass line. Cornago and Ockeghem's piece is far from the realm of the pedantic.

Ockeghem is known for his exquisite, song-like handling of bass lines, composing them with as much flair and melody as normally is reserved for the superius (top line). While this tendency is followed here, he does seem to temper his style a little. Unlike pieces such as Petite camusette, in which the sense of contrast between the borrowed and new material is an integral part of the experience, he "dumbs down," and writes his new line in the style closer to that of Cornago's so that just enough new motion is added to the mixture to bring it to life in a marvelous way. And "life" is the word. This glowing piece now overflows with affirmative vitality. As the brave poet says: "To love well and to lament much; this is the life that you grant me."

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