For the Love of Learning since 1597

Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come. 

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    Performing with Toy Pianos

    Toy pianos were first made in the 19th century. This lecture/recital tells the story of an instrument originally marketed at children, that subsequently made a surprising transition into the professional sphere.

    Russian Piano Masterpieces: Shostakovich

    Shostakovich had considered the career of a concert pianist, yet his piano music studiously avoids the virtuosity he had assiduously cultivated as a young performer. Almost all his piano writing is in some way experimental and conceptual.

    Space Sounds: The Music of the Cosmos

    Space today is terrifyingly silent. But it wasn’t always thus: the early universe was filled with a hot plasma in which sound waves could travel. The cosmos was quivering with the aftershocks of the Big Bang.

    BBC Radio in the Digital Era (1982–)

    On 17 August 1982, the first commercial CD was released. Digital recording and editing have changed the face of music by making recordings easy to originate and share. But has this affected musical quality, and what are the financial and artistic consequences?

    Russian Piano Masterpieces: Prokofiev

    Prokofiev’s piano music struck his contemporaries as matching the new era: its dynamism was compared to sport (“football music”), and its grinding repeated patterns to industrial sounds (“machine music”).

    Russian Piano Masterpieces: Scriabin

    Scriabin was Rachmaninov’s classmate at the Moscow Conservatoire, and enjoyed comparable fame during his lifetime, and yet today he is much less known, especially outside Russia.

    The Mathematics of Bell Ringing

    This lecture will look at change ringing, which is ringing a series of tuned bells (as you might find in the bell tower of a church) in a particular sequence, and this has exciting mathematical properties. We will also ask: why are bells bell-shaped?

    Boris Ord‘s King’s College Carols

    Boris Ord composed one tiny Christmas carol – ‘Adam lay ybounden’. But Ord’s largest contribution to the carol genre was his work as choirmaster at King’s College, Cambridge from 1929 to 1957.

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