Negotiating Trauma in New Art Song

This material was presented as a paper at the Cascade Song Festival, 24 January 2025, and is part of a larger project on vocal music and trauma. Please contact me before quoting or citing any material here.

Negotiating Trauma in New Art Song

Kendra Preston Leonard

(1) Content Warning: In this presentation I discuss rape and other sexual violence, death, psychological abuse, and traumatic memory. I will not be offended if you need to leave this presentation for any reason at any time.

(2) In this project on negotiating trauma in/and vocal music is a new one for me, and I’m wearing two hats: I’m approaching it both as a librettist and lyricist, and as a musicologist and music theorist. My work is influenced by art song texts and opera libretti, and by numerous scholars and practitioners, including Margaret Cormier, whose book Rape at the Opera: Staging Sexual Violence tracks operatic practices with regard to works like Don Giovanni and Salome[1]; Patrick Duggan, who explores the performer-audience relationship when trauma is presented as part of entertainment; and Olivia Bloechl, who has written about operatic survivors’ testimonies; and others working across and within a variety of disciplines. Bloechl notes that while “sexual violence and the emotional responses it elicits have been a pervasive trope in Western opera across its four-hundred-year history,” many non-opera dramatic vocal works of the twenty-first century “have centered antiracist, decolonial, and feminist perspectives,” and that “they also integrate, to varying degrees, a critical viewpoint on the histories and continuing inequities that expose their characters to harm.”[2]

(3) I argue that much the same holds true for narratives in new art song (defining new as having been composed in the last 20 years; we all know how long it takes new music to become part of the repertoire) where I—as a lyricist—and many of my colleagues choose or have been tasked with creating texts that are explicitly feminist, anti-racist, non-ableist, and otherwise socially conscious. However, we are also often asked for works about trauma of various kinds as well as narratives that address survivors’ stories and “overcoming” narratives—sometimes even in the guise of being “feminist” or “decolonial.” I am fortunate that many of my commissioners ask me to write about being more than one’s trauma or to resist the stereotype of the “resilient” (but often “damaged”) survivor. The arts are inundated with the trope of the noble or strong survivor, while few artists have engaged with the underlying complexities of resistance, recovery, and/or reparation; and few have considered the effect of such works on performers. As Duggan writes, “trauma is an evocative and emotive force that binds an audience to the theatrical action drawing them ever deeper into the performance event.”[3] Therefore, simply describing a song or song cycle as one of “heartbreak” and “healing” prepares neither audiences nor performers for the potential violence, possibly (re-)traumatizing material, and unpredictable after-effects of coming into contact with such work. Here, I offer some preliminary thoughts on practices we—performers, composers, lyricists, anyone and everyone involved—might create as part of developing a community of care in negotiating with, teaching, and performing new art song that comes out of trauma of various kinds.

(4) Trauma is often the impetus for art; so too is sensationalism.

Some critics, including Parul Sehgal, have condemned what they see as the overuse of trauma and diagnoses of trauma and PTSD, asking, in “a world infatuated with victimhood, has trauma emerged as the passport to status—our red badge of courage?”[4] Some of us may well respond with an emphatic yes, perhaps in part because we have seen or heard art in which trauma is applied or addressed at a very superficial level.

(5) Responding to Sehgal, however, Alicia Elliott argues that with careful handling by artists, presenting trauma in a way that “didn’t linger, didn’t sensationalize” allowed the artist to protect the audience from careless or casual retraumatizing.[5] Rather, in the example she uses, Katherena Vermette’s novel The Break, she notes that

Despite all of the traumas hinted at in this book and how much violence, both colonial and domestic, has shaped each character’s life, there are not scenes depicting this violence outright. Instead, Vermette follows the contours of this violence, showing us the depths of these traumas through each character’s coping mechanisms or thoughts. Reading it, I couldn’t help but think of her comments about centering already-traumatized readers. How she didn’t dwell on the violence because she was concerned with the response of her audience—one she expected to have some experience with the traumas and violence she was writing about.

(6) Vermette’s approach, writing for a specific—in this case Indigenous—traumatized audience, speaks directly to trauma and violence without commodifying victimhood or making it either a virtue or something shameful. This, Elliott elucidates, is the difference between “trauma porn” and “trauma-informed narratives.” Trauma porn focuses on the visceral, the physical, the blood and brains of violence and trauma, lacking any connection with people who have been traumatized. And there are many stories that creators cannot tell without including references to trauma. But in telling those stories, Elliott writes, we need to resist the colonizing gaze of the non-traumatized, the person who “wants to eat our pain, wants to read even fictionalized violence enacted on us in excruciating detail.” Artists have responsibilities to their audiences and performers, that they—we—are accountable for how we present material to others. Despite what some believe—and the entire culture-production machine of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries tell us—the artist isn’t superior to the audience, and artists taking care with how they tell stories isn’t censorship or a curtailing of rights—it’s about recognizing a human obligation to their fellow humans.

(7) In her work teasing out the postdramatic and the post-traumatic in theatrical narrative, Karen Jürs-Munby asks whether there is “an affinity between trauma’s incommensurability, inaccessibility and ultimate resistance to narrative representation and postdramatic theatre’s anti-representational impetus, combined with its preference for fragmentation and its emphasis on the live co-presence of audience members and performers?”[6]

She argues that a society with mass media such as that we experience in North America results in many more people encountering trauma through media than in their own, personal lives.

“How do artists,” she further asks, “account for a world in which most of the traumatic events we ‘witness’ are ones we have not seen in person?” Her answer is to consider a “continuum of the many ways in which postdramatic performances may engage with the nature of traumatic memory.” I propose that the art song repertoire—particularly that of the last 20 years—can also be mapped onto this continuum. Like the postdramatic works Jürs-Munby cites, art song focusing on trauma also often involves repetition, re-membering, mis-remembrances, historical distortion (deliberate or unintentional), and the blurring of specific events into broader representations. This continuum, applied to art song, is not linear, but a complex matrix.

(8) As a final theoretical note, I want to propose a framework of thinking about art song in a Lacanian framework.

For Lacan, trauma happens in the Real, but as soon as we assign language—the symbolic—to the (memory of) trauma, we move the trauma from the Real into perceived reality; what we think of as “reality” is necessarily structured by human narratives and almost inescapably fictionalized. What artists create comes from the symbolic, influenced by the Real, but because of the inherent defenses of the mind and the interference of language and its inability to address the Real, they are never able to fully articulate it.

(9) Cathy Caruth summarizes this as “a history that in its crises can only be perceived in unassimilable forms.”[7]

Music assists in the articulation of what is possible. As playwright Sarah Mantell writes about the need for “resilience services” in the theater, artistic expression and creation allows artists and audiences to “touch the wound, but don’t live there.” Therefore, I—as an individual and as a lyricist—can never quite represent the trauma within the Real, but I can use this metaphor as a way of grappling with trauma in lyric-writing that recognizes the power and functions of the symbolic. For the audience, the wound can evoke an empty place in which they can place their own ideas or memories, even though doing so in full, in an accessible way, is impossible.[8] Those of us seeking to understand trauma live in reaction, in empathy, in compassion with others’ wounds.

(10) If we are to fully engage in that compassion, we need to be preparing and protecting performers and audiences involved in musical works that focus on trauma. How do we do that as creators, performers, and instructors of song? I have found numerous examples of opera productions of grappling with these matters, as well as two notable examples in choral music.

The first of these is composer Mari Esabel Valverde’s “We Hold Your Names Sacred,” a litany of and for murdered transwomen that is intended to be “programmed with extended efforts to connect the BIPOC trans population with concrete resources local to its performance(s).”[9] A second is Lore Burns’s “Here is a Safe Place,” at the end of which the composer asks audience members to “turn to a person nearby and introduce ourselves with our pronouns.”[10]

(11) Within the vocal repertoire, though, such practices are less common. Composers I spoke with about this topic indicated that they generally did not include content advisories or any other materials or resources for mitigating potential trauma among performers or audiences. Composer Bonnie McLarty, writing about her piece Snow Angel, which uses text by Wyatt Townley and is about “the reclamation of personal identity and agency following a sexual assault of the female protagonist,” stated that she did not include such materials.[11] However, the premiere of the work, held at the University of Kansas School of Music in 2021, did have representatives from the school’s Counseling and Psychological Services available virtually for students; community members who attended were given contact for information for a free counseling service in the community.[12] This proactive approach on the part of KU is an excellent example of the kind of “resilience services” I am advocating for in the art music world.

(12) One of the only other things that I have found to date—please tell me about examples I should know about!—that comes close to offering guidance in regard to trauma and the potential for re-traumatizing performers is Myles McLean’s foreword to NewMusicShelf’s Anthology of New Music: Trans and Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1, curated by Aiden K. Feltkamp and published in 2016.[13] In it, McLean writes that the collection of pieces in the volume celebrate “the wonderful array of intersectional experiences within” the trans community while recognizing that singers and the voice are often subject to misgendering and erasure because of art songs’ inherited limitations that force singers into an artificial gender binary. McLean encourages users of the anthology to embrace trans joy and the embodiment of singing as a trans vocalist, but omits deeper consideration of potentially negative emotional responses or a discussion of how singers might feel as they explore their voices, suggesting that all of the works in the collection testify to and/or resonate with beauty, affirmation, and “a sense of belonging.” McLean makes only one comment that hints that engaging with a song that cites gender dysphoria might be difficult or call for preparation or aftercare on the part of a performer, instructor, or listener. McLean’s milquetoast note, “some works even allow space to acknowledge that flawed—and sometimes even harmful—individuals exist within our community” is about a song extracted from an opera cycle, Dana Kaufman’s “To my mother’s closet,” which sets text from Caitlyn Jenner’s televised interviews.

(13) Finally, I do want to mention the Voice and Trauma Institute and Lab, which investigates “the relationship between a person’s traumatic experiences and their voice.” It is focused on psychophysiology and the vocal apparatus, which is outside the scope of this paper.

(14) Clearly there is a lacuna in the creation and publishing practices of new art song to address trauma depicted in or that has inspired such music. I have been complicit in not addressing this in my own work as a lyricist, which in addition to and in conjunction with topics like compassion, human rights, myth, magic, and nature and the environment, also engages with domestic, psychological, and emotional violence and abuse; rape; death; and other traumas and traumatic events. For many works already in or entering the repertoire, for which there are no such notes or information, we are reliant on historical interpretations (primary source writings and recordings and secondary sources like scholarship and scholarly editions), widely varying performance editions, and program and liner notes that do not address trauma. I propose that for creators of new art song, respect for those who perform it includes recognizing it as essential to communicate about the content of those works. For performers, I propose that respect for audiences similarly includes this recognition.  Here I offer some initial thoughts on doing so in a considered way that takes into account the matrix of trauma and memory. Creators can use them in developing content advisories; instructors or coaches teaching a work that doesn’t have such warnings can use these guidelines to prepare performers; performers can use them to prepare audiences and devise aftercare for them.

(15) Be honest and direct.

Don’t be euphemistic. If a work deals with death, say that: “this song cycle is about death.” “Death” is not “passing away.” If it is about rape, write “this piece depicts, describes, details rape,” not “an assault,” not “an attack,” not “harm.” Rape is never the same as consensual “sexual content.” Plenty of people would like to just say, “this work includes sexual content” or “mature themes.” These are weasel words: works people use when they don’t want to be honest and frank. Will the performers create, or will the audience hear, the sounds of physical abuse in the piece? Tell them. In my piece with composer Angela Slater, a tulip, iron, I begin the lyricist’s note by writing “a tulip, iron is about the fear and horror created by psychological and emotional abuse, the relief of escape from abuse, and the work required to contend with traumatic memories of it.”

(16) Provide information up front.

Tell the performer and audience what happens as part of the presentation of the work Write them a note and make it obvious. For performers, put it in the score, on the very first page past the title page. Not in a video you hope they will watch or hear before experiencing the piece; not in a note on your website or social media page that may never get seen. For audiences, put it not just in the program but also read it from the stage before the performance begins as part of the performance, not just silently added to supertitles or projections. “In this song, Cassandra predicts the mass killing of the Spartans.”

(17) Make a map.

Help performers and audiences understand what happens within the piece. Not the kind of program note that says, “the piano then takes over this mournful melody, transposing it by a third.”

No, a map of the emotions and experiences depicted in the work. This map was made for a performance of a work called Divergent Sounds, by Jen McGregor and Amble Skuse. It was designed for a piece about autism with text by autistics, and this map is for autistic as well as neurotypical audience members.

It helps prepare the audience for the sounds and text they’ll hear, in case they need to leave the room, use earplugs, or other techniques to minimize harm.

(18) Let people choose how to handle the work.

Tell your audience that it’s ok if they need to leave before the performance or during it because of what they might experience. Announce from the stage when it’s the next item in the program and give them time. Never push a student into learning a song that might be traumatizing; if a student wants to learn such a piece, make sure they have access to you and to mental health services if they find that they need it. 

(19) Offer aftercare.

Be available to talk with audience members after the performance. Told a talkback with performers and share information for organizations like RAINN and local mental health resources at the performance.

(20) Ultimately, I want to make the new music world a safe space, one where we acknowledge trauma and are informed about it. Send me your suggestions, recommendations, examples of who’s doing it right, your anecdotes, your ideas, your personal rating systems for music about trauma, whatever you’ve got. Let’s have a conversation.

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Bibliography

[1] Margaret Cormier, Rape at the Opera: Staging Sexual Violence, Music and Social Justice (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2024).

[2] Olivia Bloechl, “Survivors’ Songs in Opera: What the Vulnerable Voice Can Do,” Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 25, no. 1 (2021): 35-6.

[3] Patrick Duggan, “Feeling Performance, Remembering Trauma,” Platform 2, no. 2 (2007): 44.

[4] Parul Sehgal, “The Case Against the Trauma Plot | The New Yorker,” New Yorker, December 27, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/01/03/the-case-against-the-trauma-plot.

[5] Alicia Elliott, “The Case FOR the Trauma Plot? How Writers Can Use It with Purpose and Care,” CBC Arts, February 11, 2022, https://www.cbc.ca/arts/the-case-for-the-trauma-plot-how-writers-can-use-it-with-purpose-and-care-1.6346579.

[6] Karen Jürs-Munby, “‘Did You Mean Post-Traumatic Theatre?’: The Vicissitudes of Traumatic Memory in Contemporary Postdramtaic Performances,” Performance Paradigm 5, no. 2 (2009): 201.

[7] Jürs-Munby, 202.

[8] Jürs-Munby, 209.

[9] Mari Esabel Valverde, We Hold Your Names Sacred, SATB (Graphite Publishing, 2023), https://graphitepublishing.com/product/we-hold-your-names-sacred-satb/.

[10] Author: Annalyce Wiebenga, “Review: Compose Queer,” Farrago Magazine, April 19, 2021, https://farragomagazine.com/article/farrago/review-compose-queer/.

[11] Bonnie McLarty, personal communication with author (Facebook Messenger), December 11, 2024.

[12] Conner Mitchell, “KU School of Music to Perform 2 Modern Operas Examining Sexual Assault, Transgender Identity,” The Lawrence Times, April 26, 2021, https://lawrencekstimes.com/2021/04/26/ku-music-operas/.

[13] Myles McLean, “Foreword,” in Aiden K. Feltkamp, NewMusicShelf Anthology of New Music: Trans & Nonbinary Voices, Vol. 1 (NewMusicShelf, Inc., 2021).