Paul Madaule — audio-psycho-phonology in the service of singers

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In a paper entitled “Audio-psycho-phonology in the service of singers and musicians,” Paul Madaule — a practitioner trained under Alfred Tomatis and founder of the Listening Centre in Toronto — applies the principles of the Tomatis method to the musical world.

The argument starts from an observation drawn from Tomatis’s work: the ear governs phonation and participates in the awareness of the body schema. In the performer, the mastery of the voice or of the instrument depends on a fine auditory control of all the parameters of the work being played. Madaule recalls that improving a musician’s “potential for control through listening” increases their mastery of execution by as much. He characterizes the “musical ear” — capable of perceiving and analysing the sound spectrum (the 500–4000 Hz zone) with speed and precision, according to the response curve described by Tomatis —, then reviews the disorders that impair this function and the manner in which the techniques of audio-psycho-phonology (re-education of listening, the Electronic Ear) aim to restore to the ear its qualities.

Historical context — Paul Madaule is among the principal continuators of Tomatis’s work in the English-speaking world. His application of the method to singers and musicians extends the founding intuition — “one sings with one’s ear” — towards musical pedagogy and artistic performance.