Robert Carver

Robert Carver CRSA (also Carvor, Arnot; c. 1485 – c. 1570) was a Scottish Canon regular and composer of Christian sacred music during the Renaissance.

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 was the subject of the 1991 BBC radio play Carver by John Purser, which won one of the Giles Cooper Awards for that year.

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