Gresham College Lectures

The long-playing record and the BBC’s Third Programme changed the face of classical music in Britain.

In popular music the 45 rpm record became the recorded medium of choice, and in 1970 the BBC’s home networks grew to four in order to broadcast respectively (and respectably) pop, easy listening, classical music, and speech.

Radio 3’s flagship programmes such as the weekday drivetime slot Homeward Bound and Saturday morning’s Record Review taught listeners what to listen to and how to listen.

A lecture by Jeremy Summerly 28 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/radio-lp

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

The long-playing record and the BBC's Third Programme changed the face of classical music in Britain.

In popular music the 45 rpm record became the recorded medium of choice, and in 1970 the BBC's home networks grew to four in order to broadcast respectively (and respectably) pop, easy listening, classical music, and speech.

Radio 3's flagship programmes such as the weekday drivetime slot Homeward Bound and Saturday morning's Record Review taught listeners what to listen to and how to listen.

A lecture by Jeremy Summerly 28 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/radio-lp

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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Scriabin was Rachmaninov's classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and he likewise received a Gold Medal for his combined studies in piano and composition. His commitment was also as unswerving as Rachmaninov's, and yet public knowledge of his music remains hazy, especially outside of Russia, and it still has an esoteric and forbidding aura. Scriabin's starting point was Chopin, but where others were content to pay reverent homage to that earlier master, Scriabin took him as inspiration for bold experiments in his preludes, études and above all in his great series of ten sonatas, which span his career.

Working within the loose artistic movement known as "Symbolism", his ambitions were fuelled by theosophy and his own syncretism of mystical ideas. For him, some of his later projects stretched far beyond the normal limits of art, and one partially written piece was designed to bring about the dissolution of the universe into nothingness. The Sonatas take us on a journey from his early post-Chopin soundworld through to refined sensations and rarefied sounds of his later Symbolism, and although his ideas descended through decadence to insanity, his musical judgement never left him.

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker and Peter Donohoe OBE 21 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/scriabin-piano

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

Humans use computers to do gigantic calculations which would be impossible to do by hand – for example, weather prediction.

But could an AI go beyond that and come up with a proof of a theorem which has stumped humankind? Could computers suggest how to attack problems, searching knowledge bases for known results?

As automatic and interactive computer theorem provers become more powerful, should mathematical researchers begin to worry that they will soon be out of a job?

A lecture by Kevin Buzzard 20 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/smart-computers

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Humans use computers to do gigantic calculations which would be impossible to do by hand - for example, weather prediction.

But could an AI go beyond that and come up with a proof of a theorem which has stumped humankind? Could computers suggest how to attack problems, searching knowledge bases for known results?

As automatic and interactive computer theorem provers become more powerful, should mathematical researchers begin to worry that they will soon be out of a job?

A lecture by Kevin Buzzard 20 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/smart-computers

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

For nearly seventy years, what might be called ‘the canon’ of greatest films has been arbitrated by an international poll of critics delivering a ‘ten best’ list every decade, published in the BFI’s Sight & Sound.

Before the next such poll, due in 2022, this lecture considers what factors have made certain films and their makers ‘classic’; and why the fifty-year reign of Citizen Kane was ended in 2012 by Hitchcock’s eerie melodrama Vertigo.

A lecture by Ian Christie 18 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/film-classics

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

There is no need to introduce Rachmaninov, considered by many to be the greatest composer-pianist in history and the creator of several famous items on the “classical hit parade”. But his very popularity has always detracted from the value of his music in the eyes of scholars, who tend to view his music as merely middlebrow. This is a serious misunderstanding of his art, and has left the complexity and subtlety of his music underappreciated.

The secrets of his immersive and compelling music still have to be uncovered, even if their effects are well known to an adoring public. Taking a selection from Rachmaninov’s Preludes, we will concentrate on three crucial aspects of his piano music: the “Russianness” of his materials (whether real or imagined), the complexity of his scoring (how much can a pair of hands manage, or the human ear digest?), and the art of dramatic timing (how does he construct a climax, and how does he descend from the peak?).

The exploration of these three elements helps to understand the extraordinary artistry and technique behind this music’s irresistible appeal.

A lecture by Marina Frolova-Walker and Peter Donohoe CBE 26 November

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/rachmaninov-piano

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

For nearly seventy years, what might be called 'the canon' of greatest films has been arbitrated by an international poll of critics delivering a 'ten best' list every decade, published in the BFI's Sight & Sound.

Before the next such poll, due in 2022, this lecture considers what factors have made certain films and their makers 'classic'; and why the fifty-year reign of Citizen Kane was ended in 2012 by Hitchcock's eerie melodrama Vertigo.

A lecture by Ian Christie 18 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/film-classics

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show

Amelia Dyer was one of the most prolific murderers in Victorian Britain. She made a living as a “baby farmer”, or someone paid to care for unwanted or abandoned infants – except she killed around 400 of them.

How could a mother and nurse murder so many defenceless babies? Was Dyer not only a baby-killer but also the real “Jack the Ripper” (as some sleuths have speculated)? Was she insane, or simply an “ogress” in feminine form?

A lecture by Joanna Bourke 14 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/amelia-dyer

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

One of the most powerful tools in public health is screening – whether for cancers like cervical or breast cancer, genetic abnormalities, or infectious diseases.

Screening can be transformational, detecting disease early and preventing it taking hold. It is, however, often useless and can be harmful, and its advantages are often exaggerated.

This talk will consider the situations where screening can help, where it does harm, and why these are usually predictable.

A lecture by Chris Whitty 13 January

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/medical-screening

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege