Masses bore titles adopted from the popular melodies on which they were founded: such, for example, as 'Adieu mes amours,' 'A l'ombre d'un buissonnet,' 'Baise-moi,' 'L'ami baudichon madame,' 'Le vilain jaloux.' Even the words of love-ditties and obscene ballads in French, Flemish, and Italian, were being squalled out by the tenor while the bass gave utterance to an _Agnus_ or a _Benedictus_, and the soprano was engaged upon the verses of a Latin hymn.

Baini, who examined hundreds of these Masses and motetts in MS., says that the words imported into them from vulgar sources 'make one's flesh creep and one's hair stand on end.' He does not venture to do more than indicate a few of the more decent of these interloping verses; but mentions one _Kyrie_, in which the tenor sang _Je ne vis oncques la pareille_; a _Sanctus_, in which he had to utter _gracieuse gente mounyere_; and a _Benedictus_, where the same offender was employed on _Madame, faites moy scavoir_.

As an augmentation of this indecency, numbers from a Mass or motett which started with the grave rhythm of a Gregorian tone, were brought to their conclusion on the dance measure of a popular _ballata_, so that _Incarnatus est_ or _Kyrie eleison_ went jigging off into suggestions of Masetto and Zerlina at a village ball.
To describe all the impertinences to which the customs of vocal execution then in vogue gave rise, by means of flourishes, improvisations, accelerations of time and multitudinous artifices derived from the _ad libitum_ abuses of the fugal machinery, would serve no purpose.

But it may be profitably mentioned that the mischief was not confined to the vocal parts.

Organ and orchestra of divers instruments were allowed the same liberty of improvising on the given theme, embroidering these with fanciful _capricci_, and indulging their own taste in symphonies connected with the main structure by slight and artificial links.