Aural Territories: how phenomenology taught me how to compose electroacoustic spatial music

In this article I describe the process of creation, performance, and reception of two sets of multichannel pieces -� Journey I and II and Night Song I and II -� performed as part of Aural Territories: a concert of spatial electroacoustic music. The main philosophical foundation for this experience has been the views on phenomenology as conceived by Merleau-Ponty (2004) and Dufrenne (1973). In these pieces, I explore compositionally three aspects of the interrelationship between sound and space that were fundamental for my theoretical and practical understanding of electroacoustic spatial music: acoustic space, sound spatialisation, and reference. First I describe shortly some aspects of my theoretical research in sound spatialisation: the phenomenological approach and the use of space as a structural element in composition. Then I describe the process of creation of the pieces and the implementation of the 16-speaker system used in the concert. In the last section I describe the reception of the pieces in the concert situation, as registered in a questionnaire filled by the listeners. In the conclusion I discuss what I learnt from the whole process and some implications of the phenomenological approach to electroacoustic music in general and electroacoustic spatial music in particular.