especially well remembered today because it was so widely used by Renaissance composers as a cantus firmus for the Latin Mass. It was probably used for this purpose more than any other secular song: over 40 settings are known. Many composers of the Renaissance set at least one mass on this melody; the two settings by Josquin, the Missa L'homme armé super voces musicales, and the Missa L'homme armé sexti toni are among the best known. Other composers who wrote more than one setting include Matthaeus Pipelare, Pierre de la Rue, Cristóbal de Morales, Guillaume Du Fay and Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina. A cycle of six settings, all anonymous but probably by the same composer, survives in a Neapolitan manuscript which was supposedly a gift to Beatrice of Aragon of some of the favorite music of Charles the Bold. While the practice of writing masses on the tune lasted into the seventeenth century, including a late setting by Carissimi, the majority of mass settings of "L'homme armé", approximately 30, are from the period between 1450 and 1510. One of the earliest datable uses of the melody itself was in the combinative chanson Il sera pour vous conbatu/L'homme armé ascribed to Robert Morton, which now is believed probably to date from around 1463, owing to historical references in the text. Another possibly earlier version of the tune is an anonymous three-voice setting from the Mellon Chansonnier, which also cannot be precisely dated. In 1523 Pietro Aron, in his treatise Thoscanello suggested that Antoine Busnois was the composer of the tune; while tantalizing, since the tune is stylistically consistent with Busnois, there is no other source to corroborate Aron, and he was writing approximately 70 years after the first appearance of the melody. Taruskin has argued that Busnois wrote the earliest known mass on the melody, but this is disputed, many scholars preferring to see the older Guillaume Du Fay as the creator of the first L'homme armé Mass. Other composers whose settings of the tune may date from the 1450s include Guillaume Faugues, Johannes Regis, and Johannes Ockeghem. The tune is singularly well-adapted to contrapuntal treatment. The phrases are clearly delineated, and there are several obvious ways to construct canons. It is also unusually easy to recognize within a contrapuntal texture. Modern treatments Composers still occasionally turn to this song for spiritual or thematic inspiration. British composer Peter Maxwell Davies: parody