The neuro-physiological foundations of music therapy (Grenoble, April 1974)

Summary of the paper given by Dr A. A. Tomatis at the Information Days on Psycho-Musical Techniques, Grenoble Conservatory, 1-2-3 April 1974.

Programmatic text: to ground music therapy in solid scientific foundations, Tomatis lays down the principle that any “therapeutic validity of sounds” presupposes first an elucidation of the underlying neurological implications. The human body — an instrument ideally designed to vibrate in unison — is at once emitter-creator and oscillator-receiver. By this twofold title, it makes possible the transmission of a lived experience from one body to another. A genuine sonic pharmacopoeia can be elaborated only on the basis of this physiological knowledge of the “beneficial sound”.

Towards a neuro-physiological foundation for music therapy

To claim to base music therapy on a neuro-physiological foundation is, of course, to grant it a status of existence. But, in our view, it would serve no purpose to attempt an approach to the therapeutic validity of sounds if we were not given the means to uncover the neurological implications inserted within them. May we not, moreover, in such an attempt, find the most effective means of securing for this science — in truth as old as the world — the right to enter the plane of techniques worthy of being applied and broadly developed in a perspective of humanisation?

I believe, furthermore, that these considerations will make it possible to restore order in a field where many work blindly, so to speak, forgetful of the laws and rules that govern the proper functioning of the mechanisms they claim to bring into play. Thus will be brought out the very notions of the possibility of a therapeutic action of music, together with a clearer formulation of the criteria conditioning its efficacy.

The body, ideal instrument of resonance

With regard to music, there is no doubt that the most ideally designed ensemble for vibrating in unison is the human body. The latter not only makes it possible to bring forth that mode of expression which is music, but it also creates it as its own emanation in its rhythms, modulations and melodies — so many structural elements that unmistakably evoke the dynamic of a true language.

To approach more easily the understanding of this twofold aspect of the body — creator-emitter on the one hand, oscillator-receiver on the other — it is plain that the best solution is to consider the instrument-body in its neurological aspect, equipped with its accessories of stasis and motricity, which will subsequently induce the temporo-spatial counter-reactions so intimately bound up with the notions of rhythm and melody.

A neurological system can be envisaged as “creating” only when seen in its most highly controlled aspect, and so cybernetically elaborated. Not that one may thereby deny the spontaneity of production: but the latter takes on the appearance of a welling forth from a creative source only if the composer is able to perceive, analyse and reproduce — translating, transcribing — what he seems to receive.

Of transmission from one body to another

Music permits, through its acoustic medium, the transmission of this personally felt — and so consciously lived — experience to an “oscillating body” capable of vibrating in unison and able to reproduce inwardly, even to relive, this musically expressed intention.

It is these means of transmission from one body to another that we are concerned to study here. It is plain that the quality of the emitter-composer will largely condition the therapeutic value of the sonic message used. As for the efficacy of the latter, the point of impact will be all the more certain in so far as we know the criteria for setting the body to be treated into resonance.

Towards a sonic pharmacopoeia

Thus the knowledge of the physiological qualities of a “beneficial” sound, if I may say so, must allow the elaboration of a sonic pharmacopoeia — which has hitherto been confined to a few stammerings, for want of the scientific foundations necessary to ensure the control of the effects produced.

— Dr A. A. Tomatis. Summary of the paper given at the Information Days on Psycho-Musical Techniques, Grenoble Conservatory, 1-2-3 April 1974.