Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg

Elisabeth Honn Hoegberg received a Ph.D. in Music Theory and an M.A. in Musicology from Indiana University, and a Bachelor’s in Music History and Piano from Illinois State University.

While pursuing her baccalaureate, she served as music director of the Normal Parks and Recreation Summer Theatre Program, a repertory high school company, and performed with the Illinois Shakespeare Festival as a musician.

At Indiana University, concurrent with her studies, Elisabeth held the positions of Associate Instructor in Music Theory and Musical Skills Coordinator and was active with the Jacobs School of Music’s Early Music Institute. In addition to performing and recording repertoire spanning eight centuries, she studied voice with Paul Elliot and was research assistant to Thomas Binkley, translating and editing his German language writings. She was an assistant on the Thesaurus Musicarum Latinarum project as a proofreader, adjacent to her research in historical music theory that culminated in her dissertation “From Theory to Practice: Composition and Analysis in Marin Mersenne’s Harmonie universelle,” one of the few works to examine the intersection between 17^th century theory and musical practice.

In her first academic appointment, Elisabeth taught aural skills at Oberlin Conservatory, where she also coached (and played keyboards in) O-Rock, an aural skills rock band project. Elisabeth moved to Indianapolis in 2000 and in 2001 accepted a music theory position at the University of Indianapolis, where she is now Associate Professor, teaching written theory, counterpoint and keyboard. In 2018, she was appointed Chair of the Music Department and in 2020 also assumed leadership of the university’s Department of Theatre.

Elisabeth’s research interests include historical theory and pedagogy and late 19^th-century French stage works, particularly gender representation in operetta, on which she has published several chapters. She is currently writing a monograph on the stage works of Chabrier, the first English language volume on the composer in over 70 years, and is a co-editor of Genre beyond Borders: Reassessing Operetta, forthcoming from Routledge.

Elisabeth is an active collaborative musician. For many years she was a session artist with Aire Born Studios in Zionsville, Ind., recording hundreds of choral demos, and has appeared with the American Pianists Association, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. She has been a professional chorister at Trinity Episcopal Church Indianapolis since 1997, leading the soprano section and serving as a chorister trainer in the church’s RSCM program. For many years she also was a staff singer with the Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation. She regularly performs with Molto Piano, a collaborative piano ensemble, and appears annually on the University of Indianapolis’ Faculty Artist Concert Series. 

She serves on the boards of two local non-profits, as President-Elect of Indianapolis Early Music, sponsor of the nation’s oldest early music festival, and as member-at-large for Echoing Air, a Baroque ensemble focused on community outreach and education. Elisabeth is President of the Great Lakes Chapter of the College Music Society and further serves the organization on the ad hoc national oversight committee.

Elisabeth is married to James Mussell, Professor of 19^th Century Print Cultures and Director of Research at the University of Leeds. She has three children, sons Erick and Andrew and stepdaughter Miranda.