SALEM by Aude Volny-Anne

Salem by Aude Volny-Anne is not a history manual, nor a cold archive of dates and decrees. It is an artistic notebook — a woven tapestry of research, music, and inner fire.

At its core lies an interpretation of the Salem witch trials, not through the lens of detached scholars, but through the living voice of an artist who walks with the condemned, listens to their silenced cries, and transforms them into songs.

Each chapter follows the rhythm of accusation and defense: the charges recorded in the tribunal, and the response I bring as author, composer, and woman. My notes are rooted in careful attention to historical fragments — the fragile testimonies, the whispers of children, the silence of husbands — yet my writing refuses the dryness of enumeration. Instead, it explores the psychological, social, and spiritual fractures that bled through these villages, and how fear turned into collective theatre.

The accompanying album mirrors this approach: songs written in Russian, chosen for their texture and resonance, echoing both prayer and curse, innocence and betrayal. The final chamber music piece for piano Salem closes the circle — a requiem where the voices of the hanged are forever cut short, yet rise in sound.

Published under Nayunbae, this book is not simply a companion to the music but an act of reparation: an attempt to restore identity to those whose names were twisted, to recognize the paradox of children given the power to condemn, and to reflect on how these dynamics persist in modern psychology, society, and faith.

It is a notebook of resistance. It is an album of memory. It is the story of Salem retold not to lament, but to create.