The five-voiced Missa "Fors seulement" by Johannes Ockeghem has often been called the first parody mass. Musicologist Fabrice Fitch points out this is somewhat misleading: while the term parody (or imitation) mass usually refers to later techniques wherein a mass setting borrows entire patches of the polyphonic fabric of a model composition, the Missa "Fors seulement" borrows from different voices of its model only for non-simultaneous use. This technicality aside, this mass shows a composer who has built on certain experiments with cantus firmus treatment from his own Missa "Ma maistresse," and treats the borrowed melodies from his model (Ockeghem's own Rondeau cinquain Fors seulement l'attente) with even greater freedom, facility, and saturation into the mass. Only one copy of the mass survives, in a posthumous manuscript, but its perceived advances in compositional technique—both in cantus firmus treatment and in greater use of imitation—have prompted most commentators to date it later in Ockeghem's life, presumably at some point during his magnificent career as premier chapellain, then later Master of the French Royal Chapel.

Three works for five voices appear in the so-called Chigi Codex, a retrospective and honorific anthology copied in the late fifteenth century—the motet Intemerata Dei mater, the Missa sine nomine, and the Missa "Fors seulement." All three share similarly extreme low ranges in the vocal parts, and may have been composed together at a time when the Royal Chapel enjoyed the services of a basso profundo (who may even have been Ockeghem himself). Of the Missa "Fors seulement" only three movements survive, the Kyrie, Gloria, and Credo. The fact that the scribe of this manuscript left blank pages after the Credo suggests the mass is incomplete as preserved in Chigi. The Credo deploys voices in a somewhat higher range than the first two movements; scholars have suggested a possible transposition of the movement, a change of the ensemble, or the outside chance that the Credo belongs to a different mass setting.

Ockeghem constructs the Kyrie and Credo super "Fors seullement" (as the manuscript indicates) under fairly obvious principles of cantus firmus organization. The Kyrie borrows the uppermost voice from the chanson model, with quotations from and allusions to the middle voice, as well. The first half of the Credo is organized around tenor statements of this same upper voice, the second half concluding with sequential quotations from the chanson's middle voice. Phrases containing cantus firmus material may be interspersed with passages that allude to different parts of the chanson; contrasting vocal textures often accomplish the phrasal articulation. Although the presentation of the cantus firmus in the Gloria more often wanders from voice to voice, its fidelity to the quoted melodies seems higher. In both the Gloria and Credo, the movements open with triple-time, though the quotations still may use the duple-time of the model. Throughout, the counterpoint tends toward density, coupled with a richness of harmonic fluctuation, especially between harmonies based on the pitch E (requiring B natural), and those based on F (implying B flat). The conclusion of the Gloria provides a potent example: in one passage, the two tenor voices resolutely alternate phrases at the melodic distance of a second. Emotionally, the work yields a sonic world that is rich, powerful, and even brooding.

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