These modest three-part compositions, to which we may add the “Pleni sunt coeli” and the
“Benedictus” subsections of the Sanctus, were epoch-makers. Out of earlier techniques of canon and
voice-exchange the composer has worked out a manner of writing that replaces the cantus firmus (whether
held out in the tenor or paraphrased in the superius) with a series of “points of imitation,” as they have
become known after centuries of standardization. Each point corresponds to a discrete portion of the text,
the parsing of the words thus acquiring a far more direct role in the shaping of the music than in the
sections of the Mass that are built over the cantus firmus—and each point comes to a full cadential close
before proceeding to the next. Beginning with the generation of Obrecht, every composer of Masses and
motets practiced the “pervading imitation” style when not using a cantus firmus. They all learned it,
directly or indirectly, from Busnoys.
In the case of some composers, notably Obrecht, the learning-and-modeling process was
exceptionally direct, testifying to the force of Busnoys’s unsurpassed authority. Obrecht studied Busnoys’s
Missa L’Homme Armé with the same assiduousness he applied to the study of Ockeghem’s Caput Mass
and the anonymous English Mass before it. Obrecht’s Missa L’Homme Armé appropriates Busnoys’s
tenor note for note; and there is another Mass, attributed by some specialists to Obrecht as well, that
appropriates only the rhythms of Busnoys’s tenor, not the familiar tune. (In this way the borrowing
becomes not only more hidden but also more specifically an homage to Busnoys.) In such a case the lines
of dynastic composerly fealty seem even stronger and more long-lasting than the lines of dynastic political
fealty that spawned the original tradition of emulation.
There is a Missa L’Homme Armé by Faugues that quotes the headmotive of Busnoys’s Mass in its
Sanctus, just the way Obrecht had quoted the headmotive of the English Caput Mass in his Gloria. (At the
same time, of course, Faugues made sure to surpass his model by casting the cantus firmus as a canon for
two voices throughout his Mass.) Finally, there is a striking moment in Busnoys’s Sanctus where the
superius and altus suddenly drop out, leaving the tenor exposed over an energetic motive in the bassus
(Ex. 12-15a). That motive was taken over by a whole slew of followers in their L’Homme Armé Masses,