Career
Carver is regarded as Scotland"s greatest composer of the 16th-century. He is best known for his polyphonic choral music, of which there are five surviving masses and two surviving motets. The works that can definitely be attributed to him can be found in the Carver Choirbook held in the National Library of Scotland.
Carver"s work, noted for the gradual build-up of ideas towards a resolution in the final passages, is still performed and recorded today.
Carver was influenced by composers in continental Europe, and his surviving music differs greatly from that produced by many of his contemporaries in Scotland or England at the time. Highly ornate in style, it resembles most closely the richly decorated music of the Eton Choirbook.
Carver spent much of his life at Scone Abbey. Several works in The Carver Choirbook refer to the composer as Robert Carver alias arnat.
Nothing is known of his life after this event.
The following works are attributed to Robert Carver in the Carver Choirbook:
Dum sacrum mysterium. A mass for ten voices. L"homme armé. A mass for four voices.
Pater Creator omnium.
A mass for four voices. Fera pessima. A mass for five voices.
An unnamed mass for six voices. O bone Jesu. A motet for nineteen voices.
Gaude flore virginali.
A motet for five voices. An unnamed Mass for three voices in the Carver Choirbook as well as a Mass Cantate Domino for six voices in the Dowglas/ Fischar partbooks are generally attributed to Carver. Some authorities also cr Carver with the composition of the Mass Felix namque for six voices, also in the Dowglas/ Fischar Partbooks.