"Trauma and Hearing: Radigue's Triptych (2009) as a Theory of Interoception"

Andrew Malilay White, Austin Community College

What does a trauma-informed music theory sound like? Trauma-informed approaches have become influential for musicologists (Cizmic, Rogers et al. 2024). I argue that somatic conceptualizations of trauma can inform music theorists as well, especially when the borders between musical parameters are blurred. I use a trauma-informed approach to explicate an experience of drone-based music by Eliane Radigue, an experimental composer who set out to describe consciousness and sensation through a spiritual lens in her works. Radigue created her Triptych (2009) by manipulating analogue synthesizers through magnetic tape recording. The blurred boundaries of pitch, rhythm, and timbre in Triptych echo the virtuous cycle of "upregulated" interoceptive development as it appears in somatic approaches to trauma (Price et al. 2018). Interoception refers to the ability to detect physical or emotional stimuli within one's own body. I argue that Radigue's work echoes processes of interoception described in somatic literature on trauma. I bolster this argument with evidence of Radigue's engagement with the Tibetan philosophies of the senses outlined by Milarepa. Form, in Radigue's work, emerges from the individual listener's labeling of sonic parameters. In this way, each part of her Triptych has as many forms as it has listeners, each with their own histories of trauma, healing, and perception.