Robert Carver

Music knows many different forms in Scotland, as a result of her radically different traditions: the Lowland Scots one, the Gaelic Highland one, and that one represented by the north-east, greatly influenced by ancient links with Norway. Poet Kenneth Steven chooses to explore the stories of five composers, almost seeking to weave a piece of tweed from the journeys of their lives as musicians.

The Scottish Renaissance: Robert Carver
There’s much we don’t know about Robert Carver (if that even was his surname): where and when precisely he was born or the family he came from. Even less is known of all the other Scottish composers of his time; it’s simply that he stands out as the shining light of his time.

The great musicologist and composer John Purser writes of Carver in his wonderful weaving of the whole journey of Scotland’s Music. These are his words about one piece, Gaude Flore Virginali:
‘It is a subtle, well-balanced piece of great purity. Feminine in principle, its restrained modesty uses the full five parts only in the outer verses. In the fifth verse which speaks of the suffering of Mary, Carver employs three and then two voices only, while exploring dark harmonies that few, if any, of his contemporaries had tried. But within this smaller ensemble Carver uses much variety – the higher voices, plaintive for the Mother of Sorrows and, in a beautiful and joyful passage with the parts weaving in and out, he depicts the blissful throne of heaven.’

Presenter Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards

A Whistledown Scotland Production for BBC Radio 3