Alain Gerber's Interviews — SON Magazine (1972-1977)

Between 1972 and 1977, the journalist Alain Gerber held regular conversations with Alfred Tomatis in the columns of SON Magazine. This series of interviews, accessible and lively, constitutes one of the finest introductions to Tomatis’s thought in his own words. The texts are presented in order of publication.

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Alain Gerber's Interviews with Professor Alfred Tomatis 1972
A series of 15 interviews conducted by Alain Gerber with Professor Alfred Tomatis in SON Magazine between September 1972 and December 1977. Complete contents: the role of the ear, modern languages, intra-uterine listening, the maternal voice, audio-psycho-phonology, the musical ear, the singing voice (Caruso), dangerous sounds, noise, the right ear, body image, the human voice, the natural microphone, sounds and colours, sound architecture. Complete 67-page PDF available for download.
"We speak with our ear" May 1972
First interview by Alain Gerber with Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 30, September 1972). Introductory portrait retracing the genesis of the Tomatis Effect, the Electronic Ear (1954), the directing ear (Caruso, Gigli, Francescatti), the treatment of stammering (Daniel Sorano), ethnic ears (Venetian singers), language learning, dyslexia ("we read with our ear") and sonic birth.
"The richest band, that of the Russians" October 1972
Second interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 31, October 1972) on the integration of modern languages. Tomatis explains the passbands proper to each language (French 1000-2000 Hz, Italian 2000-4000 Hz, German broad, Russian the most extensive), the acoustic geography of idioms, the use of the Electronic Ear to give artificially the English/Spanish/etc. ear, and the critique of classical language laboratories.
"How the child is born to sounds" November 1972
Third interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 32, November 1972) on intra-uterine listening. Tomatis demonstrates that language has no specific physiological organ, traces the origin of the desire to communicate in uterine life (Negus, Lorenz, André Thomas's "sign of the first name"), details the evolution of the foetal ear and sonic birth, and recounts the experience of a nine-year-old girl who relives her own birth under apparatus simulating intra-uterine listening.
"The origin of language, the need to communicate" December 1972
Fourth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 33, December 1972) on the maternal voice and the origin of language. Account of a sonic-birth session with a 14-year-old schizophrenic, thesis of the nostalgia for the womb, air as a prolonged umbilical cord, mechanical genesis of "mama / papa" through the play of lips and soft palate, social stage of the father, and link with babbling / stammering and dyslexia.
"How to treat language disorders" January 1973
Fifth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 34, January 1973) on the clinical protocol of audio-psycho-phonology. Five stages (sonic return, filtered sounds from the maternal voice recorded and filtered at 8000 Hz, sonic birth, prelanguage, language), dosage (3 months for benign cases / 1 year for severe cases, 60-90 sessions for a mild dyslexic), pedagogy of the paternal voice introduced progressively, and the necessity of involving the whole family.
"The musical ear, an uncommon asset" February 1973
Sixth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 35, February 1973) on the musical ear and the psychological role of sounds. Tomatis explains "having an ear" as "having listening", the early loss of the primitive ear (at 7-8 years), why a Stradivarius does not sound in the virgin forest nor at the Nice Opera (Francescatti), the music underlying each language, the ear as dynamo of cortical recharge (800-3000 Hz), why Mozart is universally effective, and Gregorian chant as the ascetic structure of monks.
"Caruso became Caruso by chance" March 1973
Seventh interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 36, March 1973) on the singing voice. Tomatis denies the existence of particular gifts for singing, identifies the critical zone 800-3000 Hz, explains self-listening and the spectrographic photography of the voice, and proposes his explosive hypothesis: Caruso would have become Caruso after a surgical intervention in 1901-1902 damaging his right ear, giving him the hearing of a tubal catarrh — paradoxically the ideal ear for singing. Testimonies of the three singers who worked with him.
"Avalanche of decibels: beware, danger" April 1973
Eighth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 37, April 1973) on dangerous sounds and urban sound ecology. Founding research at the Arsenals, book on occupational deafness (Maduro/Lallemant), pathognomonic scotoma at 4000 Hz, ravages of rock at 8,000 W, symphony orchestras at 130 dB, young prodigies withdrawn from the bill on account of deafness.
"Noise is necessary to us" (SON Magazine no. 38, May 1973) May 1973
Ninth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 38, May 1973) on the necessity of noise. Reversible muscular-armour deafnesses, elective scotoma of an EDF employee facing his alternator, role of the psyche in hearing, hypnosis and induced scotomas, anechoic chamber and madness, and the profile of the depressive who closes himself off from sounds through psychic projection.
"The right ear: the most important" (SON Magazine no. 39, June 1973) June 1973
Tenth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 39, June 1973) on auditory lateralisation. Asymmetry of the two recurrent nerves, neuronal delay of 0.15 s to 0.40 s, identification Father = Verb = Right, wavelengths of the left-hander (35-140 m), actor cured of stammering by extraction of a wax plug from the right ear, Yin/Yang bipolarity, and the formula "to be right-handed all the way to the left".
"Sound modifies the structure of the body" July 1973
Eleventh interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 40, July-August 1973) on body image. Image as neuronal use of self, integration of tools (ball, billiard cue, violin, car), zones of the verbal flow, the cyclist's low voice, Tibetan yogis and the singing spinal column, Grotowski's theatre, the South African stammerer who infects, two pianos in resonance (Lao-Tzu), two monks at odds or united according to the inversion of the audiometric curves.
"The human voice" May 1976
Twelfth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 71, May 1976) — first of the second period. The human voice as "the greatest instrument", Verdi the scientific master, the unsingable Mascagni, the curse of French nasalisation, the larynx-as-violin technique (Italian) vs larynx-as-trumpet (French), Campagnola and the southern accent, the half-litre-of-air Rosina, the great singer with always-blocked sinuses, Caruso and the high notes with the legs.
"Is the ear a natural microphone?" June 1976
Thirteenth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 72, June 1976). Critique of the mechanistic conception of the ear as microphone, importance of the cortex and of the whole body in listening, predictive listening (the stammerer is deaf to himself), global left ear vs focused right ear like a marksman, switching points at 800 Hz and 3000 Hz, and a challenge to the microphone manufacturers.
"Of sounds and colours" (SON Magazine, 1977) 1977
Fourteenth interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine, 1977) on the correspondences between sounds and colours. Mantra yoga and yantra yoga, the seven chakras, table of syllable / frequency / colour (Lam, Vam, Ram, Yam, Ham/Aum, Xham), experimental cabin with the painter Bellegarde, correction of Rimbaud (A is red, not black), Tomatis's gift for reading the chakras at the airport, and children's drawings as a psycho-acoustic test.
"Sounds and Architecture" (SON Magazine no. 88, December 1977) December 1977
Fifteenth and last interview Alain Gerber × Alfred Tomatis (SON Magazine no. 88, December 1977) on sound architecture. Unconscious conflict between uterine regression and energising, modern flats that "assassinate" through excess of insulation, energising high-frequency sounds (>8000 Hz) vs exhausting low frequencies, non-parallel walls of the old cathedrals, the sonic radar of the child who hums in the dark, why no carpet on the ceiling, and amphorae concealed in the walls of old churches to dephase the low frequencies.