Tamarin Norwood will discuss the process of writing The Song of the Whole Wide World, her new memoir interpreting the brief life of her baby son, written partly during pregnancy and partly during the silent maternity leave that followed. She will consider the ethical and poetic considerations of expanding fragmentary details into a meaningful life narrative, and explore parallels between the roles of poetry, myth, science and fiction in the creation of meaning. The question of how to address gaps in biographical evidence is critical to life-writing, but especially urgent when the subject of a biography has no voice at all. Her memoir—selected as an Editor's Choice in the Bookseller and as a favourite non-fiction slim volume by Pandora Sykes, with features in the Sunday Times Style and The Guardian—was completed while Tamarin convened the OCLW weekly writing sessions through lockdown, and she will close with some practical remarks on finding a writing community.



Dr Tamarin Norwood is a writer and academic with a background in fine art. She has written on drawing, metaphor, memorial and grief, and has an interest in ritual and rural history. Her academic research addresses the ad hoc beliefs that emerge in response to bereavement, with a focus on reproductive loss. Tamarin is a visiting fellow at the University of Bath Centre for Death and Society, a Leverhulme ECR fellow at Loughborough University, and a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford Centre for Life-Writing.



Accessibility details can be found here: https://www.wolfson.ox.ac.uk/accessibility-wolfson-college

Wolfson College Music Society presents DAVID EARL



Programme –

Mozart - Piano Sonata in C minor K457

Schubert - Piano Sonata in A minor D845

Schumann - Faschingsschwank aus Wien Opus 26

David Earl - Metta Bhavana



5pm Sunday 2 June 2024



Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD



Free Admission. Donations welcome.

All donations from the concert will go to The Thames Valley Wildflower Meadow Restoration Project (Long Mead Foundation)

Listening to Maths



Euclid’s Elements has been translated more often than any book except the Bible. Within it, the author discusses harmonic relations with reference to the golden ratio, ideas that have influenced everything from Renaissance architecture to music and the making of Stradivari instruments. Dividing a string, as happens whenever a cello is played, creates an expression of harmonic ratios which are found in the design of the instrument and throughout nature, just as they are in music. When you listen to a cello, you are listening to mathematics.



In this event, these Euclidean ratios will be illustrated in various ways. Robert Brewer Young, a master luthier and professor of philosophy, will explain their origins and sketch them with chalk and compass on a blackboard. The same proportions will be simultaneously demonstrated in musical accompaniment on a cello made with OCLW Co-Director, writer and cellist Dr. Kate Kennedy.



Robert Brewer Young is a luthier who makes violins in the spirit of Stradivari, Guarneri and other Italian masters. He is also a Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School and Director of the J&A Beare Scientific Research and Conservation department for rare violins.



Imaginary music made possible



Easley Blackwood's Twelve Microtonal Etudes give a glimpse of an alternative history of Western music, incorporating brand new notes that cannot be found on the piano. Using animated visualisations of the music, Matthew Sheeran will explain how he was able to record these "impossible" pieces with conventional orchestral instruments. No knowledge of music theory required!



Matthew Sheeran (born 1989) is a British composer and arranger. He studied music at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, the University of Sussex and King’s College London. In 2010 he won the Presteigne Festival’s Alan Horne Prize for composition and the Shipley Arts Festival’s Chairman of the Jury award. His music has been performed at the Aldeburgh Festival, St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and Westminster Abbey.

The Berlin Lecture will be delivered in 2024 by Professor Margaret MacMillan. 

Abstract

We like to think of war as an aberration, as the breakdown of the normal state of peace. This is comforting but wrong, as we are realizing yet again today.  War after all is deeply woven into the history of human society, even liberal ones, and at times has changed the course of history. It has helped to shape our institutions, our societies and culture and the international order. We should neither ignore nor glorify war but we ought to think about it. This lecture examines ideas about war, whether from strategists, historians, theologians, philosophers or artists. It will focus mainly on the period since the start of the 19th century when war became ever more destructive and far-reaching, and will conclude with the wars of the present.   

Keynote Lecture, as part of the Sustainability Careers Workshop:



Greenwashing refers to a corporate practice of making false or misleading claims about environmental sustainability in advertising, making a company appear ‘greener’ that it really is. Greenwashing is influencing consumer decisions and is distracting the public from the environmental harm many of the companies engaging in this type of advertising are causing.



ClientEarth and other NGOs are therefore taking action to combat these harmful practices. On the basis of consumer protection legislation, we file lawsuits against companies that engage in greenwashing. We then realise media campaigns to publicly rectify falsely made claims.



In this keynote lecture, I will explore how tackling greenwashing as type of climate action requires the involvement of professionals from multiple disciplines to succeed. We will look at successful court cases, such as a recent judgment against KLM. We will also learn why many files never make it to court and explain what you can do to address greenwashing.



Speaker:

Natascha Kersting is a Law and Policy Advisor at ClientEarth. She works on ecosystem governance, developing and implementing strategies to prevent deforestation and encourage reforestation in West and Central Africa. She also supports strategic litigation, currently an OECD complaint against Cargill. Natascha is also Senior Research Fellow at Cambridge Governance Labs where she leads a project on Responsible AI Governance. She holds an LL.M. in public international law from the University of Cambridge and law degrees from Panthéon-Sorbonne University in Paris and the University of Cologne.

Wolfson College Music Society presents Asaka Quartet



Programme -

Schubert - Quartettsatz

Beethoven - Opus 18, No. 2 in G major

Danish String Quartet - Unst Boat Song

Brahms - String Quartet No. 1 in C minor



5pm Sunday 5 May 2024



Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD



£15 | £10 Wolfson Members | Students Free

Tickets available on the door of the event (cash only).

Celebrating Australian Music (CAM) celebrates Fauré Anniversary



6.30-7pm Talk by Dr Roy Howat, ‘Rediscovering Fauré’

7.30-8.30pm Recital of music by Fauré and Australian composers



Programme –

Wendy Hiscocks – Explorer goes East

Peter Sculthorpe – Mountains

Peggy Glanville-Hicks – Prelude to a Pensive Pupil

Gabriel Fauré – Music for cello & piano, Madrigal & Pavane



Saturday 11 May 2024



The Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD.



Free Admission. Seats can be reserved by visiting www.celebratingaustralianmusic.com

Wolfson College Music Society presents AMREF HEALTH AFRICA CONCERT. Performed by Nima Farahmand Bafi



Programme -

Nima Farahmand Bafi - Persian fantasy

Leoš Janáček - Piano Sonata 1.X.1905

Nima Farahmand Bafi - Jin - Jiyan – Azadi (Woman – Life – Freedom)

Frédéric Chopin - Polonaise Op. 53

Nima Farahmand Bafi - Poems without words

Ernest Bloch - Nigun from Baal Shem (arr. Nima Farahmand Bafi)

Nima Farahmand Bafi - Concert paraphrase on "Chahargah" by H. Kassai



5pm Sunday 21 April 2024



Leonard Wolfson Auditorium, Wolfson College, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6UD



Free Admission. Donations welcome (cash only).

All donations from the concert will go to Amref Health Africa

Wolfson College presents a concert of Romantic piano music for four and six hands performed by current Wolfson students. Highlights include the Berceuse from Fauré's Dolly Suite, Saint-Saëns’s tempestuous Danse Macabre, and Rachmaninoff’s dances for six hands. 

Works by Beach, Debussy, Fauré, Moszkowski, Rachmaninoff, Saint-Saëns, and Schubert.

Performed by Jessica Rahardjo, Emma Cameron, Tein van der Lugt, Theodor Borrmann, and Frederik Florenz.

Admission is free; donations are gratefully received for AMREF.

Ella Taylor is a former prize winner at the Kathleen Ferrier Awards and has been described by The Guardian as having ‘a voice of tempered steel, wrapped in a warm velvet cloak'. They gave a sensational Emerging Artist performance at the 2021 Festival and we are thrilled to welcome them back for this concert.



Full programme details will be announced shortly.