Date/Time
Wed, Oct 14, 2026
2:30 pm EDT - 4:00 pm EDT
Panelists: L. Poundie Burstein, Megan Long, Stefano Mengozzi, Gilad Rabinovitch, and Peter Schubert
Hexachordal solmization, first designed by Guido of Arezzo in the eleventh century, has had exceptional staying power. The system was ubiquitous throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and musicians continued to solmize using hexachords through the early nineteenth century. Hexachordal solmization thereby forms a type of pedagogical practice that Thomas Christensen (2011) characterizes as “fragile” or “hidden” theory.
Like all such fragile theory, hexachordal solmization offers opportunities for the modern scholar for gaining insights into the experiences and pedagogy of musicians from a different time and place, allowing for exciting new avenues for performance and analysis. For instance, for Renaissance music, solmization suggests valuable models for understanding contrapuntal techniques like canon and exact imitation, improvisation, and specialized strategies like inganni. For eighteenth century music, hexachordal solmization helps highlight galant schemata and tonal features. Yet since so much is left unrecorded, understanding practices of hexachordal solmization requires creative reconstruction by the modern music theorist. Accordingly, there is a risk that such a reconstruction will be skewed by present-day agendas and distort the actual goals of earlier practices.
Unfortunately, discussions by theorists of hexachordal practice often take place in isolation. An upshot of this is that hexachordal solmization has acquired an unjust reputation among some as an arcane tradition that has little bearing on musical experience. One aim of this panel is to show how hexachordal solmization can be understood as a vital, living tradition that can inform music performance and analysis in down-to-earth ways.
Another consequence of this isolation is a relative scarcity of competing ideas in the wake of Baragwanath’s (2020) monograph reconstructing eighteenth-century galant solmization. For instance, the recent, award-winning journal issue on the topic (ed. Baragwanath and van Tour 2024) notably lacked balanced viewpoints that might have illuminated problems with this reconstruction, thereby placing its benefits in clearer perspective. Our panel balances optimistic and more skeptical approaches to these historical pedagogies, with panelists including theorists, musicologists, historians of theory, and practitioners. Along with its mix of viewpoints, our panel brings together Renaissance and galant music scholars.
Registration:
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Bios:
Poundie Burstein is a Professor of music theory at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of CUNY, where—among other things—he teaches hexachordal solmization. He is the former president of the Society for Music Theory and author of Journeys Through Galant Expositions.
Megan Long is Associate Professor of music theory at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and the co-editor of the Journal of Music Theory. Her first book, Hearing Homophony, won the SMT Wallace Berry Award, and she is currently writing a second book on solmization in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
Stefano Mengozzi is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of Michigan. His research concentrates on medieval and renaissance diatonic theory and on musical analytic methodologies for the study of medieval and renaissance music. He is the author of The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo Between Myth and History (Cambridge, 2010). Recent publications have appeared in ad Parnassum and in the Proceedings of the German Society for Music Theory. An article on contrapuntal schemata in Renaissance lamentations is forthcoming.
Gilad Rabinovitch is Associate Professor of music theory at Queens College, CUNY. He has published on galant schemata and historical improvisation and received article awards from the Society for Music Theory. He is working on a book reimagining the patterns of nineteenth-century piano improvisation.
Peter Schubert is Professor of music theory at McGill University and an active choral conductor. He has published counterpoint textbooks and articles on Renaissance music and pedagogy and has created numerous YouTube videos on counterpoint and improvisation. The Fourth Leipzig Improvisation Festival said “Peter Schubert is considered one of the great improvisation gurus of North America.” He is also the recipient of the 2015 Gail Boyd de Stwolinski Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Music Theory Teaching and Scholarship.