Carver's Mass Fera pessima for five voices of perhaps about 1525 has many stylistic affinities with the Mass L'Homme armé. It is another cantus firmus Mass (that is, one based on a recurring melody, often in longer notes and traditionally placed in the tenor), and it is also cyclic like the Mass for six voices in that each movement begins with a few bars of the same musical material.
Carver's Mass Pater creator omnium for four voices is precisely dated 1546 in the manuscript source. It is something of a curiosity, revealing on the one hand a desire by the composer to accommodate progressive ideas about clear word-setting and harmonic, chordal idioms, and on the other a reversal to his earlier decorative style. What music may have intervened between the Mass Fera pessima of about 1525 and this work is sadly lost, but may have revealed evidence of the radical stylistic changes that seem to have occurred.

Mehta was twenty-six when he became conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and he stayed for seventeen years, growing into a major conductor. These performances were recorded in 1977 in concert at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. Mehta left the following year to take over the New York Philharmonic. Kirk Browning of Live from Lincoln Center was the producer and RCA veteran Max Wilcox was the sound engineer and their work is first-rate. (…) The orchestra plays superbly and Mehta is at his charismatic best. He could pass for either a Hollywood or a Bollywood film star playing a great conductor. Fortunately, he was also a great musician.