Both as a composer and a person, Johannes Ockeghem remains an enigmatic figure to us today. We do not know when Ockeghem was born, but the fact that he wrote a mass based on the tenor of a chanson by the famous composer Gilles de Binche (Binchoys) may suggest that Ockeghem received his musical education in Mons (in today’s Belgium).

Curiously, hardly any reports exist about Ockeghem the composer and musician, so the dates of origin for the masses recorded here must remain conjectural. In contrast to his other masses, Ockeghem refrains from employing melodies or musical material taken from his own or other contemporary compositions. Instead he develops his melodies and their combinations through two fundamental aspects of the musical language of his time – in the Missa Cuiusvis toni, using contrast between the modes, and in the Missa Prolationum, the combination of identical melodies with each other.