Chant II

This course will be taught by Dr. William Mahrt, who also teaches musicology and the performance of Medieval and Renaissance Music at Stanford University.A ten-week intermediate course in Gregorian chant for singers, directors, and lovers of the liturgy and its music. It will presume a rudimentary knowledge of reading Gregorian notation, and will proceed from the reading and singing of chants in Latin from the antiphons of the Divine Office to the chanted propers of the Mass. Review of notation and Latin pronunciation will be the foundation for the discussion of textual and musical the chants: mode, tessitura, contour, density, text expression, and co-ordination with liturgical action. Beginning with the simpler chants, psalm antiphons, musical, liturgical, and spiritual aspects of each genre will be studied in turn: introits, communions, offertories, graduals, alleluias, and tracts, with emphasis on the processional propers. Some chants of the Ordinary of the Mass will be included as well. Aspects of the liturgical year will be addressed, with an emphasis upon the upcoming Holy Week. Each week’s course content includes an approximately one-hour lecture, plus the opportunity to participate in a live Zoom practice/study session. Ten week course: $850