Dr William Mahrt

Dr. William Mahrt is a professor of music history at Stanford who also directs a Gregorian schola (the St. Anne Choir) at St. Thomas Aquinas parish on Homer Avenue in Palo Alto, California.

There's an article on Gregorian Chant as a Paradigm by Dr Mahrt at Musica Sacra, as well as an article On Music in Catholic Worship.

The Stanford alumni magazine has an article, On Wings of Song which remarks:


Perhaps it isn’t so surprising, then, that not everyone who is devoted to plainsong in its religious setting is Roman Catholic. Susan Weisberg, a social worker at Stanford Hospital who joined the choir in 1989, is Jewish, but her attraction to the liturgy is longstanding. “When I was young, growing up in New York in the pre-Vatican II days, I would go to midnight Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral regularly on Christmas Eve,” she recalls. “I was fascinated by the mystery—the words, the music, the incense. This music has always been with me.”

For years, after moving to Stanford with her husband, Law School professor Robert Weisberg, JD ’79, she attended the feast day Masses sung by the St. Ann Choir. Weisberg finally summoned the courage to ask Mahrt if she could join.

“I didn’t know anything about the notation and the liturgy and the Latin: I was a three-time loser. Would anyone with these daunting odds want to continue? Yes,” she says emphatically. “Bill is so knowledgeable, and he’s so enthusiastic about the chant. I’m thoroughly hooked.”