Robert Carver was born in Scotland in 1484. He died in 1568 in Scone (near Perth, in Scotland). Little is known about his life, but he was considered to be the greatest Scottish composer of the Renaissance. He enjoyed royal patronage, and was a canon of the Abbey of Scone and was associated with the Royal Chapel of Scotland. His music was his main interest, and he was very good at it.
Robert Carver was the only British composer to write a mass based on the tune “L’homme arme,” (a common style of masses on the continent), and was the first to popularize such music. He was influenced by continental Europe, and most of his work was written in florid late-Renaissance polyphonic style, combining English and Flemish elements. These and other quirks specific to his music marked him as inventive and daring as a composer. His work is noted for the gradual build-up of ideas towards a resolution in the final passages. One exception, however, is the mass “Pater Creator Omnium,” which is in the “faburden” style favored by the Reformers. Early works of Carver’s are some of the most elaborate examples of reparatory with extremely subtle passage work written for vocal soloists.
The bulk of Scottish Latin Church music was destroyed during the Reformation. The main survivor of this style of music is the Scone Antiphony, known as the “Carver Choirbook” because of the inclusion of so many of Carver’s masses. Robert Carver is known mainly for his five most famous masses and two motets, all of which can be found in “Carver’s Choirbook.” His five masses are: “Dum Sacrum Mysterium,” a ten-part mass; a six-part mass for which a name is not known; “L’homme arme,” a four-part mass; “Fera Pessima,” a five-part mass; and “Pater Creator Omnium,” a four-part mass. Carver’s two Motets are the 16-part “O Bone Jesu,” and five-part “Gaude flore virginale.” These works are unquestionably Carver’s, and can be proven to be his by his signatures. However, there are two other masses that were...