"In my opinion...finer music cannot be created." Thus spoke Glareanus, a contemporary music theorist, about Josquin's Missa de Beata Virgine. All discernable accounts from the time suggest that for the sixteenth century, this was the most popular of all Josquin's considerable output, and it found its way into more manuscript collections than any other. Its name comes from the paraphrased Gregorian chants beneath the surface—instead of a single unifying cantus firmus, a full set of mass chants suitable for any of the great feasts of the Virgin—and from three brief interpolations of Marian devotional texts into the Gloria, including a musical pun: the text "Mariam coronans" set to a chordal style often marked with fermatas, known as "coronae." The construction of each mass movement on the basis of a different chant, quite a rarity, also poses some challenge to the unity of the cycle. Not only are the different chant models in different modes (keys), but the techniques of composition vary from close imitation (as in the opening of Kyrie) to single-voice cantus firmus (as in Sanctus). It is also the case that the last three movements, by means of a musical canon, shift to five-voice texture from the four voices of Kyrie and Gloria. This has led to the suggestion that the Mass may merely be a compilation. Nevertheless, the Mass delivers to the ear an elegant completeness and maturity.

Among the many elements of Josquin's consummate mature style are the supple arches of his melodies, the careful crafting of rhythms (especially seen in sequences) to create satisfying conclusions to a movement, and the perfection of text/music relationships. But more telling than these is the powerful impregnation of the entire musical substance by the sound of the chant models (a feature that comes to its most complete fruition in the Missa Pange lingua).

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