While much discussed and analyzed, Josquin's setting of Plus nulz regretz mimics the structural features of the poem in ways which have gone undetected for two reasons: essential stylistic details of the "Chant nouvel" by Jean Lemaire de Belges have not been identified, and Josquin disguised his musical realization of those details. By first examining the text and comparing it to Lemaire's other surviving "Chant nouvel," and then analyzing the motivic organization of the chanson, the article shows that for every poetic gesture Josquin devised a musical counterpart, chief among which is a concentric organization of motives (ABCCBA) to match the rhyme scheme. The hypothesis that Josquin used techniques related to Leon Battista Alberti's methods for determining perspective in art is invoked to explain a striking symmetrical structure of temporal units. This in turn has implications for the way composers throughout the Renaissance planned proportional compositional structures.
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