Carver was Scotland’s great Renaissance composer, a polyphonic master of the
stature of Dufay or Josquin. The vast bulk of Scottish Latin Church Music was
physically destroyed during the Reformation; the principal survivor is the
Scone Antiphonary, generally known as the Carver Choirbook, and if we had
other, similar sources he might not appear such an isolated genius.
Carver’s unquestioned works (all from the Carver Choirbook), are:
Masses: Dum Sacrum Mysterium (10-part); 6-part Mass; 4-part Mass ‘L’homme
armé'; 5-Part Mass ‘Fera Pessima’; 4-Part Mass ‘Pater Creator Omnium’.
Motets: O bone Jesu (16 parts); Gaude flore virginale (5 parts).

Probable works: acephalous 3-part Mass (in Carver Choirbook); 6-part Mass
‘Cantate Domino’(survives in an independent source - is anonymous but ascribed
to Carver on stylistic grounds and also because it partly recomposes music from
the ‘Fera Pessima’ Mass).

Most of Carver’s work is in the extremely florid late-Renaissance polyphonic
style, combining English and Flemish decorative elements but probably growing
out of a largely lost established tradition of sophisticated Scottish
polyphony. However the Mass ‘Pater Creator Omnium’ is in the austere
note-for-note ‘faburden’ style favoured by the Reformers.