Catholic Pundit Wannabe: Sacred Music Proponent William Peter Mahrt's 80th Birthday

Three singers from the St. Ann Choir and the Stanford Early Music Singers, Miriam Palm, Lynne Toribara, and Susan Weisberg, threw an 80th birthday party for their renowned director, Stanford Professor William Mahrt, on Saturday afternoon March 16, 2019. Close to ninety present and former singers, students, colleagues, and friends showed up for the party in Stanford University's Braun Music Center, where Professor Mahrt has taught for many years.

For fifty of the St. Ann Choir’s fifty-six years, Professor Mahrt has been the choir’s director. Mahrt is also director of the Stanford Early Music Singers, president of the Church Music Association of America, editor of Sacred Music, the C.M.A.A. journal, and publisher at New Liturgical Movement. He also directs chant workshops including several recent workshops with the Benedict XVI Institute for Sacred Music and Divine Worship.

For more about Professor Mahrt and the St. Ann choir’s unique role in preserving the traditional Gregorian chant and polyphonic music of the church see this California Catholic Daily article, Palo Alto’s secret gift to the Church and this Regina Magazine article, Miracle in Palo Alto: How the St. Ann Choir Kept Chant and Polyphony Alive for 50 Years. Also see this Stanford Magazine article: On Wings of Song: For a Stanford professor and his choir, Gregorian chant is a way of life.

Some notable guests at Professor Mahrt’s birthday party included Ross W. Duffin, retired Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, who got to know Mahrt well when he was a Stanford graduate student in early music in the mid-1970s. Duffin led partygoers in a polyphonic birthday song he composed in the style of early Renaissance Franco-Flemish composer Guillaume DuFay.

Kerry McCarthy, noted scholar, singer, and biographer of English Renaissance composers William Byrd and Thomas Tallis, is a more-recent former graduate student of Mahrt’s who earned her Ph.D. in 2003 and returned from Portland, Oregon for the party.

In this photo, friends are singing a little canon written for Bill by Paul Furnas, which ended with a shouted "80"! From left, Bill Marht, Ross Duffin, Joyce Johnson Hamilton, former first chair trumpet in the SF Symphony and head of the San Francisco Early Music Society, Lynn Toribara, long-time choir member, Bev Simmons (Mrs. Ross Duffin), and Kerry McCarthy.

Also present was cryptographer Whitfield Diffie, who is famous for his contribution to the Diffie–Hellman algorithm, and who, along with his deceased wife, Mary Fischer (who sang with the choir), has been another long-time friend. Martha Girard, the widow of influential French thinker and Stanford Professor René Girard, was seen sharing photos and reminiscences with Professor Mahrt; until Girard’s death in 2005, the Girards attended (and Martha still attends) the Gregorian Chant Latin Mass at noon on Sundays at St. Thomas Aquinas Church, at which the choir sings.

Writer Cynthia Haven, who is the biographer of Girard and of other major figures such as Czesław Miłosz, and who also attends the Gregorian Mass, was there. Father Francisco Nahoe, Conventual Franciscan, and Father Augustine Thompson, O.P., two of the priests who celebrate the Gregorian Masses, also attended.

Father Francisco Nahoe and Al Acena

Fr. Thompson and Bill

Acting Stanford Music Department Chairman, Steven Hinton, and Monsignor Steven Otellini of Nativity Church of Menlo Park both gave eloquent tributes to Professor Mahrt, and Monsignor Otellini gave a blessing.

Bill and Monsignor Otellini

Therese Curotto, who sang in the choir briefly a few years ago, painted a portrait of Professor Mahrt in a favorite white hat, from a photo she took at a CMAA Colloquium, and she presented the framed painting to him during the party.