Dr. William Mahrt

William Mahrt teaches musicology at Stanford University, where he directs the Stanford Early Music Singers. He also directs the St. Ann Choir in Palo Alto, California, which regularly sings Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony in liturgical performance.

His scholarship centers upon the performance of Medieval and Renaissance music and its relation to liturgy and to music theory. He has written on the relation of music and liturgy; music and poetry in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; and on the music of Guillaume de Machaut, Orlando di Lasso, and Johannes Brahms.

He is president of the Church Music Association of America and editor of its journal, Sacred Music, the oldest continually-published music journal in the United States. He gives workshops on Gregorian chant and on Renaissance music around the country.

Dr. Mahrt points out that today is a particularly opportune time for the cultivation of Latin church music, since the present Pope, Benedict XVI, is particularly concerned with fostering what the Second Vatican Council designated the "Treasury of Sacred Music," and has written eloquently (as Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) about the relation of music and liturgy.

For further information, call Susan Scheib at 214/327-6823 or email to polyphony@toot.org. Please share this information with other interested singers.