Virginia Dellenbaugh

Virginia Dellenbaugh's picture

Ginger Dellenbaugh (music history) holds a B.Mus. in Vocal Performance from Vanderbilt University and an M.A. in Liberal Studies from The New School for Social Research. With the support of a Beinecke Library Jackson Brothers Fellowship and a Mellon Sawyer Seed Grant, Ginger is currently completing a dissertation titled “Music Notation Patents of the USPTO: 1802-2022.” Based on an archive she has constructed from over 220 patents of notation, her dissertation envisions each patent as a data trace of music making outside the purview of formalized music education and practice, outlining an ongoing, dynamic, and as yet unaddressed, history of vernacular music and innovation in the United States.

Before coming to Yale, Ginger was a Fulbright recipient in Vienna where she researched and performed music of the Second Viennese School. For over a decade, she performed classical and contemporary repertoire in Europe and the United States. Her recent book, Maria Callas’s Lyric and Coloratura Arias (Bloomsbury, 2021), uses a 1954 album as a lens to examine the various aspects of vocalization and cultural reception of the feminized voice in both classical and pop culture. Her writing has also appeared in, among others, Oxford American, The Journal for Interdisciplinary Voice Studies and Public Seminar.

In 2022, together with Giulia Accornero (Harvard), Ginger founded a new AMS Study Group dedicated to the study of music notation, inscription and visualization. Over the years, she has also conceived and organized conferences on the phenomenon of conversion and disenchantment, the theater impresario Erwin Piscator, and theories of vocal manipulation and mediation. Since 2014, Ginger has been a member of the part-time music faculty of Eugene Lang College at The New School in New York, where she teaches about music and politics, the cultural history of the voice, and vernacular notation systems.  

Her most recent talks include: “Sonic Resistance – Hanns Eisler und Musik als politisches Werkzeug” at Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria; “Hystri-sonic: Music and the Political Struggle over Reproductive Rights” at EMP, Seattle WA; and “The New, The Useful, and the Non-Obvious: Music Notation Patents of the USPTO” at IMS2022 in Athens, Greece.

Program Type: 
Music History
Specialization: 
Music History