Missa Caput

The Missa Caput is a cyclic mass setting employing as a tenor cantus firmus the closing melisma on the word "caput" or "head" from the foot-washing antiphon Venit ad Petrum. The earliest such mass is attributed to Guillaume Du Fay (c.1400 – 1474) in the Trent Codices, but since the discovery of fragmentary English sources it has been accepted as the work of an anonymous English composer of the 1440's.

It circulated widely on the European continent in the mid-15th century and was one of the best-loved musical works of the early Renaissance in Europe, judging by the number of copies that have survived, and the number of imitations it inspired. It was influential both as a prototype of the tenor mass and as the first extended composition with a freely composed bass line, a feature with extraordinary ramifications in music history. Later Caput masses by Johannes Ockeghem and Jacob Obrecht both appear to be directly modeled on this setting.

A 2006 article by Anne Walters Robertson puts forth a symbolic interpretation of the 'head' motive, divorced from a Maundy Thursday context.