The courts of northern Italy in the late fifteenth century strove mightily against one another for the services of the best-trained foreign composers of music; the likes of Josquin Desprez, Heinrich Isaac, Alexander Agricola, and Loyset Compère, were highly prized for the luster with which they could adorn a noble's cultural retinue. A number of these composers, notably Isaac, Agricola, and Johannes Martini, apparently spent quite a bit of effort crafting pieces in the genre of the instrumental fantasia; many even refer in their obscure titles to members (often female) of the noble court society. Isaac's La morra (or La mora) was an extremely popular contribution to this tradition; nearly 20 copies survive in manuscripts across Europe, some suggesting text, some perhaps adapted for wind ensemble, some intabulated for lute or keyboard.

In form, La morra begins gently, much in the style of French and Italian secular "art" song popular in Medicean Florence. Soon, however, the composer's fancy takes flight, and small motivic patterns—both in imitation between voices, and in sequence (frequently fourfold) among them—dominate the musical surface. The tenor voice seems to vary in function between full participation in the counterpoint, and holding (tenere) a central melody around which the other voices spin. The title and original context for the piece remain somewhat enigmatic. A number of early sources give an Italian text incipit, "Donna gentile," but with no complete text. The more common title La morra could either refer to the well-known political figure and cultural patron Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, or perhaps to a 1492 Spanish victory over the Moors at Granada, an event celebrated throughout Catholic Europe.

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