This song sets the opening verses of the first epistle of the Heroides (Heroines) by Ovid, the poet’s attempt to write letters from famous heroines to their lovers, in this case from Penelope to Ulysses, following the defeat of Troy. (The others are: Phyllis to Demophoon, Briseis to Achilles, Phaedra to Hippolytus, Oenone to Paris, Hypsipyle to Jason, and Dido to Aeneas). Mudarra’s setting is short and largely homophonic in style. The harmonic progressions explore the first mode (transposed) widely. The vihuela part is crearly in three voices in addition to the vocal part. The music sets only the first couplet of the text (there are 58 in total), repeated for the following couplet.
This setting may be associated with the tradition of humanistic ode setting, notably comparable with a setting by Hofhaimer. (See RISM S 2806 D-Mb, no 22. The musical setting follows the type of poetic metre used for odes: in this case: L SS L SS L L / L SS L SS L L // L SS L L L / L SS L SS L L L // (see https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/pdf/10.1484/M.EM-EB.4.2018007) from S. Gasch, S. Tröster, B. Lodes, Ludwig Senfl (c.1490–1543): A Catalogue Raisonné of the Works and Sources. Vol. 1: Catalogue of the Works. Epitome musical (EM). Brepols, 2019.
Roa 393: observes: “Mudarra, taking Hofhaimer's model, wrote a new piece based on the elegiac distich. Although the melody does not correspond to his, rhythmically they are copies. It is even possible that Mudarra used the Austrian’s text, since there are many textual coincidences (all the variants are found in both authors). The elegiac distich is formed by a hexameter plus pentameter, combining dactyls and spondees: Hexameter _ ‿‿/_ ‿‿/_ _/_ ‿‿/_ ‿‿/_ _/ ; Pentameter _ ‿ ‿ / _ _ / _ / _ ‿ ‿ /_ ‿ ‿ / _ / -- This translated into music gives us exactly the rhythm used by Mudarra. The hexameter would correspond to cc. 1-12 and the pentameter to cc. 13-25.