Resonance in Musical Scales
Resonance in Musical Scales — The Physiologists' Viewpoint (1960)
Trilingual communication (summaries in English and German, main text in French) by Doctor Alfred Tomatis, then director of the Acoustic Psycho-Physiology Laboratory of the Centre d’Études des Propulseurs at Saclay, professor at the École des Psychologues Praticiens and lecturer at the École d’Anthropologie. A three-page offprint (paginated 210-212 in the original volume) devoted to the physical, physiological and psychological nature of musical resonance.
RESONANCE IN MUSICAL SCALES
THE PHYSIOLOGISTS’ VIEWPOINT
by Doctor Alfred TOMATIS
Director of the Acoustic Psycho-Physiology Laboratory of the Centre d’Études des Propulseurs at Saclay
Professor at the École des Psychologues Praticiens
Lecturer at the École d’Anthropologie
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL VIEWPOINT
Music as defined by its physical substratum, appears essentially in its acoustical architecture as the exploitation of the resonance of a medium.
Therefore its possibilities are infinite. They are nevertheless limited if not subordinate to our psycho-physiological reactions.
The pool of sound surrounding us, and in which we move, determines, — in accordance with our permeability, our affinities, tendencies, desires —, reactions which testify to an analysis and an appreciation of all its acoustical components.
The exterior resonantial mode finds an echo in our own physiological resonance. From this accord springs the adaptation of the senses which motivates so much of our physio-acoustical conditioning.
From this encounter, from this elaborated conjuration, from this astonishing association, emerge the most extravagant sonic combinations offering the whole range from the most primitive rhythms to the most masterly musical languages.
STANDPUNKT DER PHYSIOLOGEN
Die Musik, so wie sie nach ihrem physischen Substrat definiert ist, erscheint hauptsächlich in ihrer akustischen Architektur als die Ausnutzung der Resonanz eines Mediums.
Daher sind ihre Möglichkeiten unbegrenzt. Jedoch bleiben sie begrenzt, und sogar unseren psycho-physiologischen Reaktionen untergeordnet.
Das umgebende Tonbad in dem wir uns fortbewegen, bestimmt, — in Einklang mit unserer Permeabilität, unseren Affinitäten, unseren Tendenzen, unseren Trieben —, Reaktionen, welche die Analyse, die Bewertung jeder ihrer akustischen Komponenten besorgt.
Dieser äussere Modus der Resonanz findet ein Echo in unserer physiologischen Resonanz. Aus diesem Einklang entsteht diese Gefühlsanpassung, welche so vielen von unseren physio-akustischen Beschaffenheit begründet.
Aus dieser Begegnung, aus dieser meisterhaften Verbindung, aus dieser erstaunlichen Vereinigung, entstehen die aussergewöhnlichsten Klangerzeugungen, die ein Gebiet darstellen, das von den primitivsten Rhythmen bis zu den meisterhaftesten Musiksprachen gelangt.
The physiologists’ viewpoint
What is meant by resonance? Does one address oneself solely to the acoustic phenomenon exploiting a physical property of matter, or can one glimpse, under this designation, a physiological resonance — a true adaptation to an acoustic complex?
The divergent opinions were born, it seems, of the difficulties encountered in defining exactly the object of the discussion. Moreover, it must be admitted, it is no small matter to come to agreement on opinions. And if resonance exploits a physical property of matter, it establishes itself upon an encounter with a physiological resonance whose interpretation remains a function of our last stages of integration, which determine all its complexity. So it is a fundamental necessity to distinguish the three stages of the progression of the phenomenon before appreciating its practical value.
There is no music without resonance. This is the affirmation that we can consider as fundamental, and that is true in the stages envisaged: physical, physiological and psychological. If divergences of appreciation appear, they will be born of the distribution of the different factors which constitute the definitive integration result, since these three events add up and indispensably condition one another.
There is no doubt that, on the physical plane, resonance corresponds to well-known reactions of matter. It corresponds to an extraordinary possibility of exploiting at little cost vibratory phenomena, oscillating under preferential conditions which escape the resistances of every order that may arise. On the physical plane, resonance is a mode of use of energy of lesser cost from the milieu. But it evolves in a special atmosphere — that of minimum impedance.
Does this physical phenomenon have its echo with music and the perception of it? With music, without any doubt. Resonance is exploited in most instruments, but also in vocal matters. That is to say, with an often minuscule impulse such as the excitation of a violin string, or the delicate touch of a piano note, one hears ample sounds, thanks to associated resonances, often without relation to the initial impulse.
But this resonance, if it is exploitable on the material plane, even the vocal, is not the essential phenomenon that the musician designates in speaking of resonance. In his language, it is a question of translating a complex, more delicate ensemble, which associates the harmonic scale with timbre, with the quality of the audition that is raised.
Music has no resonance, in the physiological sense, unless it is heard, and its resonantial quality is a function only of the perception of another, that is, of physiological resonance. It seems therefore that a sonic phenomenon which could have been born of an instrumental ensemble without resonantial quality in the physical sense of the term, may find an extraordinary sensory resonance, an exceptional auditory affinity — and vice versa.
Nor is it solely a matter of taste that determines this resonance, but indeed a possible perception of harmonic acoustic phenomena. It is therefore towards the power of analysis that we must orient our definition of musical resonance.
Of all these perceptions, it certainly follows general rules, but offers cases as numerous as there are different subjects — and one glimpses at once that musical resonance is not confined solely in a pure and simple physical phenomenon. It even exceeds physiology, since it depends, in its ultimate interpretation, on psychological factors.
To engage a resonance is nothing. To hear it is an operation already more delicate; to integrate it, to appreciate it, to interpret it is of the greatest individual subtlety, requiring, to be glimpsed, a more advanced aspect of the study of perception.
But its structure may appear as a simple analyser capable of provoking the decomposition of sounds in the manner of a prism with respect to a luminous beam. But if it is true that it perceives sounds, if it is true that it appreciates them in intensity, if it is true that it distributes them on the membrane of Corti and distributes them harmonically, it practises this latter operation nonetheless in a systematic and identical manner in every individual, but very specifically specialised from one to the other. At the last stage, by some reflexes of regulation, the harmonic distribution depends on the middle stage of the ear, which can at will or unconsciously suppress this or that bundle, or render it more or less rich, more or less dull, more or less predominant. Thus this last stage, purely psychomotor, may hear low sounds as clear, or high sounds as sombre.
Experimentally, it is possible for us to modify at will this manner of hearing. Immediately, one witnesses a modification of all the subject’s psychomotor behaviour. One can even, moreover, determine specific reflexes, confer on the audition of a subject the climate of the audition of a chosen singer or of a known instrumentalist. A loss of a certain reflex appears, making of the subject submitted to the experiment, either a singer with an emission identical to that of the model singer, or an instrumentalist apt to reproduce the postural particularities of the model.
Musical resonance, starting from a known physical phenomenon, therefore proves tributary to an essentially individual interpretation.
Source: trilingual offprint, paginated 210-212 in the original volume, 1960. Digitised document from Alfred Tomatis’s personal archives.