William Mahrt
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In Memoriam
William Peter Mahrt, Ph.D.
March 9, 1939-January 1, 2025
Photo: Bill at the organ of St. Thomas Aquinas Church.(Bob March, 2017)
The musicologist William P. Mahrt, known as "Bill" to his many friends, colleagues, and students, was the defining director of the St. Ann Choir. A specialist in the Medieval and Renaissance eras, over the course of his long career Bill rose to become a preeminent scholar-practitioner of Gregorian chant and a cappella polyphonic choral music. His insights into the relationship between liturgy and music shaped the distinctive repertoire and liturgical life of the choir, which in turn served him as a cherished workshop for developing his theories and practical expertise.
Bill grew up near the town of Reardan in Eastern Washington. His earliest musical studies focused on trombone and piano, and his earliest liturgical experiences took place in the humble mission parish church near his family's farm. He attended Gonzaga University, graduating in 1961, then the University of Washington in Seattle, where he completed his master's degree in 1963. He continued graduate studies at Stanford University with the initial intention of studying eighteenth- and nineteenth-century music. Ultimately he concentrated on early music, completing his dissertation on the Choralis Constantinus of Heinrich Isaac (1450-1517) and receiving his Ph.D. in 1969.
Bill's life with Gregorian chant began in Seattle. In an interview published in 2018, he recalled that as a graduate student at the University of Washington, "I was drafted into a schola to sing all of the Gregorian chants for Holy Week, a daunting task. I have no idea of how it sounded, but at the end of the week, I said, 'This is what I have been waiting for!'" (Tibbetts, & al., Performing Music History: Musicians Speak First-Hand about Music History and Performance [Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018], 19). During these years he also sang in the choir of St. James Cathedral, which provided him the experience of singing the Mass Proper chants on a regular basis. It was by happenstance that during the summer of 1963, after singing a High Mass, he met William F. Pohl, who was visiting from Stanford to attend an academic conference. Pohl shared his plan to form the new choir at St. Ann Chapel that fall, and Bill was pleased to inform him that he would also be at Stanford by then. Bill went on to become a founding member of the St. Ann Choir, singing at its first Mass in October 1963.
When William Pohl departed Stanford for a position at the University of Minnesota in the fall of 1964, he left the directorship of the choir to Bill, who remained in charge of the group until he left Stanford to teach at Case Western Reserve University. After moving on to a position at the Eastman School of Music, Bill returned to Stanford in 1972 as a member of its music faculty. The following year the chaplain of St. Ann Chapel asked him to resume the direction of the choir. Bill would subsequently write a statement of norms by which the High Mass with Gregorian chant might be furthered at St. Ann's. The substance of this statement was later published in his essay, "The Gregorian High Mass and its Place in the University" (Sacred Music 101 [1974]: 10-16). Writing against the backdrop of a historic liturgical upheaval within the Catholic Church, he explains that a university community provides the ideal context for preserving classical liturgical music and culture:
Here is a concentration of people as nowhere else devoted to the pursuit of excellence. Here is a group of people whose awareness of history is great, and who possess a sensitivity to historical modes of thought. Here is a population which will flock to concerts of Renaissance music, enthralled and delighted by the beauty and the mystery of sacred music of the Catholic tradition . Here are departments of music where the performance of medieval and Renaissance music is ever-more being cultivated, not as a historical curiosity but as an art, the excellence of which attracts young people to devote their lives to the study of it. A liturgy for such a university community must contain the richness of historical tradition, and must of itself be a thing of excellence. . . The purest and most excellent form of this tradition is the Gregorian High Mass. I wish to propose that every church or chapel serving an excellent university should be the location of the cultivation of this tradition. (Mahrt, "The Gregorian High Mass and its Place in the University," Sacred Music 101 [1974]: 11.)
He goes on to cite the fully sung Masses served by the St. Ann choir as proof of the viability and potential of this liturgical vision:
I have proposed a theoretical ideal for a Gregorian High Mass, but it is not a hypothetical one; it is the basis for a High Mass which is now being cultivated at a university. St. Ann Chapel in Palo Alto, California, the Newman center for Stanford University, celebrates a Sunday High Mass attaining to this ideal. The St. Ann Choir was founded in 1963 . . . and last fall celebrated the tenth anniversary of the continuous singing of such a Mass. (Mahrt, "The Gregorian High Mass and its Place in the University," Sacred Music 101 [1974]: 15.)
Under Bill’s direction, the St. Ann Choir sang Gregorian chant and Renaissance polyphony in its authentic liturgical context all year round. He sustained this practice of classic Catholic church music on Sundays and holy days without interruption for more than sixty years, when it was in fashion and when it was out of fashion, through just about every cultural and political circumstance. This work survived the St. Ann Chapel itself; with its closing in 1998, the choir moved to Palo Alto's St. Thomas Aquinas Church.
For decades a regular Sunday with Bill's St. Ann Choir would include a beautifully organized and rehearsed Mass in Gregorian chant with complementary polyphonic motets. The evening would bring Vespers as well as dinner with members of the choir, and finally Compline. Bill saw this liturgical routine as central to his life. Over the years, his travels as a leading scholar of sacred music provided frequent opportunities for him to participate in more elaborate and prestigious liturgies around the country and abroad. Nevertheless, he would remind choir members that he was always happy to return home for a Sunday with the St. Ann Choir community.
From 2005 through 2024 Bill served as president of the Church Music Association of America. To the CMAA journal, Sacred Music, he contributed a vast array of impactful articles and editorials over many years. In 2012, the organization published a collection of Bill's essays, The Musical Shape of the Liturgy, titled after a seminal series of articles he published between 1974-1977. In recognition of Bill's achievements, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco established the William P. Mahrt Chair in Sacred Music at St. Patrick's Seminary in Menlo Park in 2022, The following year the seminary hosted an academic conference honoring Bill and marking the 60th anniversary of the St. Ann Choir.
Bill led the St. Ann Choir for the last time on Christmas Day 2024. In the early morning of Sunday December 29, he collapsed outside his home and was taken to the hospital, where he later suffered a devastating stroke. Rev. W. Donald Morgan, a regular celebrant of St. Ann Choir Masses, had visited him and administered the last rites hours before. During his final days and hours members of the St. Ann Choir kept vigil at Bill's bedside between their services at St. Thomas Aquinas. They sang office chants and favorite polyphonic works to him, joined by many students and friends who visited to pray for him and pay their respects. Bill died peacefully on the afternoon of January 1, 2025, the Octave Day of Christmas and Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God.
The exequies for Bill began with a wake at St. Thomas Aquinas Church on the evening of January 9. During these hours, in addition to the recitation of the Rosary, the Vespers and Compline for the Dead were sung by the many musicians present. The next morning, a Solemn High Requiem Mass was celebrated at Mission Dolores Basilica in San Francisco in the presence of the Archbishop, Salvatore Cordileone, who preached a moving sermon in Bill's honor. In the course of the sermon, the Archbishop offered the following lines of tribute:
He gave his all to the work of renewal of Catholic worship without any regard for personal compensation – and often did not receive any. That never slowed him down, let alone stopped him, from the pursuit of spiritual excellence through excellence in celebration of the sacred liturgy. His legendary St. Ann’s choir will stand as a lasting reminder of this.
To provide the chants of the Requiem and polyphonic choral music, a choir of over seventy singers, including current and former members of the St. Ann Choir as well as scores of Bill's colleagues, students, friends, and admirers, gathered from around the Bay Area and across the nation. At the reception which followed the Mass, they also sang a number of Bill's favorite motets from the St. Ann Choir repertoire. Bill was later laid to rest in the cemetery of St. Michael's Abbey in Silverado, California, the institution to which he bequeathed the extensive personal research library that he had built over the course of his long scholarly life.
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