Robert CARVER. Mass à 6 - Mass L'homme armé' à 4 (Cappella Nova, Alan Tavener) [vol. 2]

×

Robert CARVER. Mass à 6 - Mass L'homme armé' à 4 (Cappella Nova, Alan Tavener) [vol. 2]

Close

Carver's Mass for six voices of about 1515 is constructed on the familiar pattern of clearly-defined sections for different combinations of voices. Those in six parts for full choir are weighty and sonorous, freely contrapuntal, but occasionally introducing imitative detail between the voices, and only very occasionally more solidly structural imitation. Individual parts are always beautifully shaped, constantly crossing within a wide range, and eminently singable, in spite of occasional harmonic constraints, and the overall effect is one of much sensuous sonority. And in the very last measures of the final Agnus Dei there is a wonderfully effective use of imitation at the same pitch.
Carver's Mass L'Homme armé for four voices of about 1520 follows the time-honoured practice of basing a musical composition on a pre-existing melodic 'scaffolding', as it were - in this case the famous French popular song much set by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century European composers. Carver was in fact the only British composer to use it as the basis for the composition of a Mass. The text is set in the usual series of well-defined sections for four voices (full) alternating with those for three and two (solo). And while those for four are freely decorative, the solo sections are again often much more elaborate and contain imitative effects of detail between the voices