Il suono come forma di conoscenza dello spazio che ci circonda. Una prospettiva musicologica

In contemporary culture, a form of knowledge that privileges the sense of sight is prevailing, while it is often neglected how important hearing might be for the understanding of reality around us, especially of places, spaces and territories. The issue of how we know places through sound can be at the intersection between musicology and geography, both engaged in this field of study. With the aim of establishing a dialogue between the two disciplines, this paper presents an overview of some recent musicological research exploring the concepts of acoustic geography, soundscape, acoustic ecology, while presenting some of the ways in which music composers have dealt with the parameter of space along the centuries. More specifically in the domain of ethnomusicology and anthropology of music, a field of research is inquiring into relationships among hearing, meaning and cultural constructions, as well as of sound as a form of knowledge of places. Mapping of ritual, symbolic and physical spaces through sound, construction of sonic paths in space, relationship between sounds of nature and humanly produced sound as they are dealt in writings by Schafer, Feld, Ricci, Tomatis and taken from the author’s own research, are some of the main issues addressed by this paper.