An international rapprochement of sorts will take place this summer at the Gregorian Institute of Canada’s 8th Annual Colloquium. The colloquium’s keynote speaker is the CMAA’s own Dr. William Mahrt.
The August 6-9 conference in Vancouver is jam-packed with wonderful presentations, including topics like the role of memory in singing chant, the interaction between chant and polyphony and organ music, Hildegard of Bingen, and the connection between Catholic identity and Gregorian chant. The preliminary conference schedule is available by clicking here.
Here’s the description of the conference, which has as its theme “Chant and Culture” and takes as its starting point Dr. Mahrt’s book The Musical Shape of the Liturgy.
The Gregorian Institute of Canada has focused from its inception on performance, providing a unique opportunity for scholars and performers from Canada and around the world to share and discuss their ideas, research, and experience. This year’s theme –Chant and Culture – is inspired by an essay currently found in WILLIAM MAHRT’s book, The Musical Shape of the Liturgy, and which also originally appeared as “Gregorian Chant as a Fundamentum of Western Musical Culture”, in Sacred Music (Spring 1975). In addition to academic papers, there will be workshops in chant performance, and liturgical offices sung in Gregorian chant.
Academic papers and workshops will address the broadly conceived colloquium theme – Chant and Culture. The conference program will include papers on European and Middle Eastern chant from c. 800 A.D. to our day – chant as melody and text, but also in its relations to (among others) instrumental music, opera, social history, women’s studies, theology, manuscript studies and edition.
More information can be found here.
What an inspiring photo! Almost an icon of how chant transforms the chanter.
Brilliant, Charles!