"The human voice" — Alfred Tomatis

Twelfth interview — first of the second period (1976-1977) after more than two years of interruption. SON Magazine no. 71, May 1976. Tomatis returns to the human voice as “the greatest instrument that will ever be made”: all the instruments fabricated have been invented only to rival it. He opposes the Italian technique (larynx-violin, the voice borne by the body through the spinal column like the soul-post of the violin) to the French technique (larynx-trumpet, where nasalisation forces one to “push” terribly), distinguishes Verdi (who knows how to compose for the larynx) from Mascagni (Cavalleria Rusticana “unsingable”), and explains why the great singer whose sinuses were always blocked demonstrates that it is not the cavities that sing but the whole body.

“SON” Magazine — no. 71 — May 1976
The human voice, a marvellous instrument
Alfred A. TOMATIS
Interview gathered by Alain Gerber

Presentation

Taking up speech again and continuing the series of reflections that he had confided to us from issue 30 to issue 40, Professor Tomatis this time talks to us about the voice.

Kill the composer

Alain Gerber: The human voice is often compared to an instrument: to what extent is this comparison justified? And first, could you specify what are the possibilities and the limits of the human voice?

Alfred Tomatis: I shall begin, if you will, with an anecdote. I was some time ago in a university where, among other things, a great deal of music is studied. Some choristers came to see me with a very precise problem: “We have to sing a score in which there is a C that must be held for a hundred and ten seconds. What is to be done?” “Kill the composer!” I answered. Or at least ask him to sing it himself. One has never gained anything by shouting oneself hoarse, since one breaks one’s voice without thereby producing a quality aesthetic effect.

Many contemporary composers demand too much of singers, simply because they have no idea how a larynx functions. They think the note, they write it: it is up to the interpreter to make do! Such demands are exorbitant. I have met vocalists who were literally pining away because they were ruining their larynx merely to please a modern composer! One may therefore answer your question by saying very neatly and very clearly that there exist sounds that are impossible for a human larynx. One can obtain certain effects by scraping the floor with a rasp, if one absolutely insists on producing noises of this sort, but on no account must one ask them of the larynx!

The greatest instrument that will ever be made

A. G.: I come back to the first part of my question: can it be assimilated to an instrument?

A. T.: It is, in my view, the greatest instrument that will ever be made. Why? Because it is capable of doing all that the instruments that have been fabricated do — which, indeed, have been invented and developed only to try to rival it. Yet one must, I repeat, have a very precise idea of its possibilities.

Verdi, the scientific master

It is curious to observe that the good composers have a better intuition of the problem than the bad ones. The writing of the greatest musicians reveals a knowledge of a scientific type. And if, in this matter, one is to give the palm to someone, I shall attribute it to Verdi. The pertinence with which he uses the human voice in his works, drawing from it the maximum without ever causing it damage, is altogether exceptional in the history of music — I think in particular of the Verdi of the late works. Thanks to him, singers have been able, and can still, open the totality of their potentialities without risk of disorders. Verdi’s demands arouse, promote, free, enrich, instead of damaging and impoverishing. By studying the scores closely, one realises, if one has some notions of vocal art, that he never demands a great effort of the larynx without immediately allowing it to relax afterwards. This is what other composers do not know how to do at all.

Mascagni and the C-floor

A. G.: Who, for example?

A. T.: Mascagni, the man of Cavalleria Rusticana. With him, the tension is permanent. Result: without ever requiring the singers to go very high (contrary to Verdi, who can afford the luxury of asking for a natural B, a B-flat or a C), he wears out the larynx to the point that most of his pieces are practically unsingable! For one shouts oneself hoarse more by never descending (in some of Mascagni’s writings, C is a floor!) than by going up sometimes very high.

French composers: the curse of nasalisation

A. G.: One often hears it said that French composers have serious problems with the vocal parts. Is that correct?

A. T.: Yes, contrary to the Italians, for example. Verdi composed in a country where the “singing band” is automatic. The French, on the other hand, move about in a passband that is not that of song but that of speech. This explains to you that our great composers appear, through the vocal works they have been able to write, more as musicians for “speakers”, than as musicians for singers. In doing so, they pose problems of interpretation to a certain number of vocalists. So true is this that many Italian singers with phenomenal voices find themselves very inconvenienced as soon as they place French phonemes on a piece of music. Either they get by by keeping their accent, by pronouncing in the Italian fashion; or they speak with an impeccable accent and, in that case, run into the same difficulties as the French singer, who, for his part, finds himself trapped, unless he has found an intermediate solution of his own.

The southern accent, Campagnola’s solution

A. G.: A solution of what kind?

A. T.: The southern accent allows the problem to be resolved. It was thus that Campagnola earned his reputation of being, after Caruso, the best singer next to Caruso. Very close to Italian, the southern accent makes it possible to differentiate at the desired moment the effort produced by the larynx and the necessity of singing the phonemes corresponding to what the lyricist has written. To better understand, one must know that the phonemes corresponding to the vowels have a precise frequency. If one does not want the singer to be in difficulty, one must accord the melodic line and the succession of these phonemes, in such a way that there is no divorce between them. Indeed, it is impossible to make a low note sing if it is coupled with a phenomenon of high frequency — except for a few vocalists of exceptional gifts. Conversely, one cannot make a high note sing on a phoneme of low frequency. If composers and lyricists have no awareness of this phenomenon, it is clear that one is heading for catastrophe!

Why one cannot understand opera

A. G.: I am beginning to guess why it is so difficult to understand what is said in an opera!

A. T.: Indeed, to get around the difficulty, many singers modify the phonemes of the original text to suit themselves! Take a work like La Forza del Destino. You find at a given moment a closed è that must be emitted on an A-flat, that is to say on a relatively high note. It is absolutely incompatible! Well, the recording of this piece by Caruso is the only record on which you will hear Caruso choke up! A less scrupulous singer would have contented himself with singing a different phoneme. For example, an a. That is what most other interpreters of the work do. Instead of singing “pietà di me”, they invert and pronounce “di me pietà”. The meaning, at least, is preserved. But this is not always the case. Many Italians, when they sing Faust in French, replace the en of présence by an i, on the final C. Be surprised after that if you do not understand well!

The Italian ear and the purity of the vowels

A. G.: Let us return in a little more detail, if you will, to the problem of the passbands of Italian and French…

A. T.: The Italian singer has the chance of hearing in a band which is, as I told you, precisely that of singing. Because of this, his vowels are pure, that is to say not tainted with nasalisation. At the simple stage of speech, they are in a way already sung by the one pronouncing them. What happens exactly? The larynx emits the vowel, of course, but there is also a whole preparation of the tongue and the mouth that means that the buccal pavilion, from the anterior part of the tongue to the lips, gives precisely the volume adapted to the phoneme in question, without there being interference on the posterior part. So much so that one adds a posterior timbre (which is the pitch of sound that one wants to produce), plus an anterior cavity that gives by its volume the desired vowel.

The French band, on the other hand, lies just below; it passes between 1,000 and 2,000 hertz. Whether one speaks French or sings in French, one is constrained to place oneself in this band, and as a result, the vowels pronounced lose their purity. They are always affected with a certain nasalisation: a little n is added. This implies that the nasal cavity is mobilised to the benefit of the pronunciation of the vowel, and no longer to that of the song itself. Consequently, the voice immediately dulls, and one has almost the impression that the subject sings at the lower octave. To overcome this difficulty, the one who expresses himself in French is condemned to “push” terribly. If the French vocalist does not work according to the Italian technique, either he will have to be content with being an admirable speaker (a better speaker than any Italian will ever be), or he will constantly have serious problems to solve. What is certain is that to obtain the same sound effect, he is going to solicit his larynx in a different way from the Italian singer.

Larynx-trumpet vs larynx-violin

A. G.: Can you be more specific?

A. T.: Because of nasalisation, the Frenchman is obliged, we have said, to “push”. What does that mean exactly? It means that he presses at the level of his larynx, as one would press at the level of a wind instrument, a trumpet in this case. He is going to use the larynx like a mouthpiece, in a way. From this technique can come voluminous sounds, quality sounds and even extraordinary voices (some of our singers are universally admired).

The trouble is that the implementation of such a technique requires of the vocalist that, beyond a certain threshold, he use the respiratory flow with often considerable force. I have seen French singers always short of air, despite the fact that they had thoracic capacities much above average (some approached 10 litres of current air, which is absolutely fantastic!). By contrast, the Italians, as moreover most Germans, use their larynx like a cello or a violin.

A. G.: That is to say?

A. T.: That is to say that there is very little air coming out. Instead of pressing on the larynx at the risk of damaging it, the subject is going to proceed in a quite different way, which requires less power and less thoracic capacity. The absence of nasalisation authorises this much more supple technique. Faced with such a singer, you have the impression of being in the presence of a superb sound-machine, that functions almost without effort!

The half-litre-of-air Rosina

I have known a French singer who, having had serious lung problems and having only half a litre of current air left, had initiated herself into the Italian technique. Well, in spite of her handicap, she was perhaps the most brilliant interpreter of Rosina I have had the opportunity to hear. Instead of being a mouthpiece on which one pushed, her larynx had become a violin that could reach all the notes she wanted, almost without emission of air and, in any case, without tension. In most very great vocalists, moreover, the flow of air is very weak on the larynx. The latter does not present any spectacular compression. The vocal cords simply come together and begin to vibrate.

The great singer with always-blocked sinuses

A. G.: Yet they must be excited from the outside?

A. T.: No doubt, and to solve this problem, the natural resonators constituted by certain bony cavities, such as the sinuses, have often been evoked. For having treated him for a long time, I can affirm to you that one of the greatest singers we have had in this century (I shall not cite his name, for he is still living), did not sing thanks to his sinuses, given that his, from one end of his career to the other… were always blocked, infected, by a sinusitis such as one does not often see! This is only one example among others. When one sings well, it is not the cavities that sing, it is the whole body.

The larynx as the soul-post of the violin

A. G.: How so?

A. T.: Thanks to a posture that all very great singers know how to adopt intuitively, and thanks to which the larynx can lean against the spinal column. The larynx is going to act on the spinal column like the “soul-post” in a violin, that is to say like that little piece of wood which, touching the back plate, makes it vibrate and allows the whole instrument to sing. In the case of the vocalist, it is the body that becomes a violin.

Caruso and the high notes “with the legs”

A. G.: And which vibrates, consequently?

A. T.: Of course. The proof is that when one discusses his art with a singer, the latter is not slow in making mention of the way in which he uses certain parts of his body to sing. Caruso, for example, would assure us that he gave his high notes with his legs. Those specialising in low notes say that the sound “comes out” of the belly — which has nothing surprising about it, since when one emits a low note, it is essentially the sacrum region that begins to vibrate. Having become aware (more or less clearly) of the phenomenon, each singer can develop and master little by little his own auditory feedbacks.

After having solicited his body through his voice, he controls his voice with his body. Which is enough to say that vocal art engages not merely a voice, but a whole being.

Place of this interview in the series

This interview is the twelfth of a series of fifteen, the first of the second period 1976-1977. For the complete contents, see the mother-article of the series.

Source: Alain Gerber, “The human voice, a marvellous instrument — Alfred A. Tomatis”, SON Magazine no. 71, Paris, May 1976. Digitisation: Christophe Besson, June 2010.