Status Updates From The Musical Shape of the Li...

Part II is extremely technical; I regret not learning music well enough to follow this. Part III has really opened my eyes to beauty of William Byrd. Palestrina and de Victoria have been my focus over the last year, and while I knew Byrd was famous and highly regarded, I didn't get it. Now I think I do.

I greatly regret that my first notice of Mahrt was his obituary.

A great read so far. Mahrt was on some podcasts before his death earlier this year which are really worth listening to, as the guy knew his stuff and clearly loved it. Main themes: liturgy cannot be separated from its music, and order plays an important role in liturgy (the music, the hierarchy, the chants, all of it are meant to reflect the order of Creation in its beauty, worshiping the Creator of that beauty).

Traditional art of the East: the icon. Not personalized art, but a tradition. A spiritualized image that anyone familiar with the tradition can instantly grasp. In the west, that tradition is music. Interaction between tradition and development, but we have a cantus firmus to measure it by: the Gregorian chant; the Psalms the heart of that chant. Praying the entire psalter key to understanding the Mass propers.

"For all the talk by the theorists of opera of Gesamtkunstwerk, a synthesis of the arts, this had already been going on for centuries in the traditional liturgy."