 I wasn’t early enough, by 10 minutes, as the bellringers started about 9:40, the intel from Dennis was slightly wrong. A lady walking through the graveyard shouted ‘Happy Recording!’ before I was actually recording, the headphones disconnected (wireless) after 5 minutes so I was unable to monitor the sound, the bells clipped a bit at the beginning of the recording as they were so loud even at about 30 feet away (they are usually way up in a tower projecting across town rather than at ground level), a good chat to the East Bergholt Ringers that were In favour of the recording and passed details of local people to speak to, sounds from the town masked out the sounds of the aircraft which makes a pleasant change from the aircraft masking out the sounds of nature, organ and singing of hymns coming from inside the Church, they tyres of SUVs roaring past, a white unidentified flying feather hovering in the graveyard for 20 seconds before floating to the ground, a young man wearing a wind cheater in the rain.
The Pied Wagtail of Bergholt the Pied Piper made me realise as I watched it twitching its tail from on top of a gravestone that nature is a huge improvised ensemble that could at any moment produce a flourish a drone a rhythm a fill a chorus a crescendo a pause and that beauty that exists in a moment that only you witness and then is gone unseen by anyone else go to it and sit quietly until it comes to you meet it half way go to a concert of improvised music to hear, see a recreation an imitation of the same process in the best way that we know how. all music is historical unless it is being created right in the moment be in the space where it is being made to get an unfiltered experience natural sound is the same listen to it without inhibition raw, real and undiluted the predetermined controlled mapped out plan of conformity to life is as far away from this as being locked in prison.
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As part of the Constable Ambisonic project I want to understand how we perceive the landscape, and what did Constable and his contemporaries bring to our understanding of the natural world, and who else has contributed to the language used and ideals we hold in regard to perception of landscape. Here I talk to my mum, Terri Bowditch to try to understand how we came to live in the semi-rural town Essex market town, and how that affected my life growing up in the 1970's and 80's, in comparison to North West London where they had moved from.
 ‘I do not study much abroad these very hot bright days, last year I almost put my eyes out by that past time.’
Sheep, there were no cars when setting up but now there are cars close on the lane, cars further on the A12, aircraft, woodpecker, this is a great vantage point and suddenly I can get a sense of what Constable would have seen, fell, connected with, these are the same fields (need to get a map of the field names), ancient boundaries, and I hide behind one out of sight but not out of my mind, but this high up on a gentle hill the sound from the vale drifts up and there are sirens, and boy racers, I thin that they should put a volume limit of roads as well as a speed limit. But then I remind myself that this is probably the last hurrah of the combustion engine era, pheasant, jackdaws roosting, skylarks, storm flies, a donkey, thrush, rustling grass in the hedgerow. Old stump Hidden in the grass, hiding Trying to be invisible but failing Tinder dry from the long hot spell Magic Old hits A three minute wonder Verse chorus verse chorus A chorus of the Song Thrush Singing along lines in the sky Trails of tales That for hundreds of years This field fares well It’s still here Providing sustenance For sheep A forever search For the tender Moist and nutritious Nibbled out And then moved on Finding ones own path Amongst the herd Free within the field But don’t go too near the edges As you’ll see the way out Is blocked And that there is another side People peering in Across, over Under the grass hiding. |
AuthorField notes from Stuart Bowditch, an independent field recordist working on Constable Ambisonic. Archives
November 2025
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