In our own time, Fleming Jacques Arcadelt is best known for his foundational contributions to the genre of the sixteenth century Italian madrigal. His scores of Italian secular compositions, published in numerous printed collections, set new standards for text sensitivity, and very quickly established his fame on the Italian peninsula. Yet the same man, with the same musical skill and sensitivity to his texts, was also writing French chansons during the same formative years of that genre. Somehow, the French public took much longer to accept him; it wasn't until the 1550s, when Rabelais himself mentions Arcadelt's presence in Paris (in Pantagruel), that the French public—and the French musical press—began to give him due credit. And indeed, his visibility in French secular prints from the 1550s would only be surpassed later by Orlande de Lassus. Thus even a simple French chanson such as Margot labourez les vignes could be featured in no fewer than five printed collections between its first appearance in 1554 and 1573.

Arcadelt's setting of the simple-texted Margot labourez les vignes shows his utter facility with French musical fashions of the day. Its text, by an unknown poet, adopts a rustic air (though without the obvious sexual double-entendres so common). The peasant Margot is asked again and again to tend the vines, tend the vines, tend the vines now; meanwhile, the speaker relates how three captains met him on the road and treated him with disgust, calling him their "pox." Arcadelt sets the poem with both simplicity and wit. His chanson revolves around three refrains of Margot's work; in each, he seems to evoke both the peasant's monotony and carefree attitude by extending the phrase ("vignes, vignes, vignolet"). The refrains are, for Arcadelt, uncommonly square in the relentless march of all four voices. The speaker's odd narrative proceeds in quick duets, and the composer even wittily breaks the otherwise square phrase structure once for a pedantic address to "Margot." Once again afterwards, the refrain shakes its finger at her to close the piece. Though obviously capable of learned polyphonic writing and highbrow musical and poetic expression, Arcadelt here expertly dabbles in a more playful style of French music.

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