Medieval theology frequently produced rich and polytextual "Glossing" of the Latin Bible: a manuscript or printed page of the Bible would focus the eye upon the central authoritative text, while the margins contained an extended commentary from preachers and Church Fathers. Musicologist Jennifer Bloxam interpreted Jacob Obrecht's motet Factor orbis as a "Christmas sermon" in the same way, with a central cantus firmus text and a large number of other Christmas liturgical texts commenting upon it in the other voices. Antoine Brumel approached the high feast of the Christ-mass in a similar fashion, writing his complex and polytextual five-voiced motet Nato canunt omnia/Joseph fili David for its celebration. Brumel's motet is a bit less erudite than Obrecht's, but at the same time more powerful and direct in its musical tribute to the Christmas story. As he did in the Marian polytextual motet Nativitas unde gaudia, Brumel gave one differentiated voice a long-note chant melody, with the other contrasting both text and texture. In this case, he placed the cantus firmi in the center of the musical sound in the tenor. Brumel's tenor sings three successive chants associated with the Christmas story: Joseph fili David, which narrates the prophecy to Joseph about his wife's holy infant; Puer natus est, the Introit for Christmas day that celebrates the birth event; and Exortum est in tenebris, a quotation from a Messianic Psalm from the Christmas Vespers liturgy that looks to Christ's future work. The four voices that gloss this Christmas message use a further six texts. The main structural text, Nato canunt omnia, is a rhymed Sequence for the Christmas Mass; none of the four voices, however, sing the chant associated with it. They do interpolate different texts between its verses, overtly borrowing the proper chants: Magnificatus est rex pacificus, a Christmas Vespers Antiphon; Angelus ad pastores, the Lauds Antiphon that relates the angelic apparition to the shepherds; Puer natus est; Verbum caro factum est from the opening of John's gospel; and Magnum nomen Domini Emmanuel (a different Sequence for Christmas). Yet amid this complex web of allusion and textual comment, Brumel's music smoothly proceeds. No two borrowed melodies simultaneously appear to aurally conflict with one another. The tenor's first entrance emerges from the middle of the texture, and its opening to the second half hides in five-voiced imitation. The Christmas tenor comes in obscurity, even as the Savior did on that night.

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