There is still room in Dr. Mahrt's advanced class at the CMAA's Winter Chant Intensive coming up in January in New Orleans.
Perhaps the leading scholar of Gregorian Chant in the world today, Dr. Mahrt will cover the deeper significance of the Gregorian tradition and many chants in the Graduale Romanum. Mahrt will take the chant out of its isolation as music and embed it into a larger framework of the history of music and the development of the Roman Rite, pointing to points of integration that are usually missed.
Here's a detailed description of the course:
The advanced course will include substantial singing of chants, first the propers for Epiphany according to the Solesmes method, and then chants in a wide variety of genres. Interpretation of the chants will include the approach to overall rhythmic structure according to the Solesmes method, but also bringing other ways to comprehend the overall formal rhythm of the chants, including accentualism and semiology.
Lecture and discussion will include the following:
1) A brief history of Gregorian chant;
2) The role of memory in the formation and performance of chant and the subsequent development of notation;
3) Modes in their application to psalm tones, formulaic melodies, and free chants, and the application of melodic analysis to performance;
4) Gregorian hymnody;
5) The intimate relation of musical style and liturgical function;
6) The aesthetics of Gregorian chant: sacred, beautiful, and universal.
