Carver deals with polychoral church music from its beginnings in the early 1500s to its climax in the work of Gabrieli and Schutz. In polychoral music the singers, and sometimes instrumentalists were split into two or more groups that engaged in lively musical dialogue and joined in majestic tutti climaxes.Cori Spezzati draws on contemporary descriptions of the idiom, especially from the writings of Vicentino and Zarlino, but concentrates mainly on musical analysis, showing how antiphonal chanting, dialogue, and canon influenced the phenomenon. Polychoral music, but with impressive pomp. Carver's study shows that it was cultivated by many composers outside Venice—in Rome, all over Northern Italy, in Germany, Spain, and the New World—and that it was as capable of quiet devotion as of outgoing pomp. Perhaps most important, music by several major composers about whom there is little literature available are treated in depth: the Gabrielis, Lasso, Palestrina, Victoria, and some German masters. A companion volume anthologizes seventeen complete pieces of music, most of which are analyzed in the text of Volume 1.
