Alejandro Planchart

Alejandro Enrique Planchart (born July 29, 1935) is a Venezuelan-American musicologist, conductor, and composer. He is considered to be one of the leading scholars on the music of Guillaume Dufay, and in general he is a specialist on music of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

He was born in Caracas, Venezuela, and moved to the United States to study at Yale University, where he received the degrees of Mus.B. (1958) and Mus.M. (1960). He received his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1971, with a dissertation on the medieval English manuscript source, the Winchester Troper. He taught at Yale for several years and founded the Cappella Cordina, an early music ensemble. The Cappella Cordina was composed mainly of undergraduates, graduate students and members of the community. In 1977 he joined the faculty at the University of California, Santa Barbara; as of 2006 he was Professor Emeritus of musicology there.

Among his numerous publications are entries on Cristóbal de Morales, Clemens non Papa, Guillaume Dufay, St. Martial, St. Gall, Venezuelan places and musicians, and other topics in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (both the 1980 edition and the 2001 edition). In addition, he has conducted numerous performances for recordings, mostly of early music, many on the Lyrichord and Musical Heritage Society labels.