CRANFORD by Elizabeth Gaskell

[ginny]

It's amazing how much depends on the teacher one has. I'm just beginning to realize that. I had a teacher in music in school who just loved Gershwin. I was thinking of her the other day. She was a wonderful, kind lovely person but she LOVED George Gershwin and really REALLY REALLY wanted us to appreciate him. She tried so hard.

Try as she might, exude as she might, and she WAS enthusiastic,   to get us to relate to him, to this day when I hear Gershwin I cringe. I just did not/do not like him, did not/do not  appreciate him, (how could I have?) he did not speak to ME and I think that's a big reason that a lot of  the classics don't resonate with children: they simply  don't speak,  whether they are writer, poet, composer, what have you, to the child. 

I don't leave my face to face classes  to this day that somebody in the hall doesn't say to me, oh Caesar! We read him in the 3rd grade. Been there, done that.  BORING!

No you didn't read CAESAR in the 3rd grade, he's not boring, you read some watered down edited mess slanted to appeal to a child's biff bam super hero stuff.  I'm just beginning to learn HOW watered down, how edited.

We read Dickens A Tale of Two Cities in the 8th Grade. Know how I remember that? Because our teacher had us do drawings of the characters, illustrate the characters, pick the one we were most like.  I remember doing those drawings and I couldn't draw. And I couldn't relate, but I enjoyed it and  I remember Madame LaFarge and the heads chopped off to this day.

In my old age I am just now  beginning to realize what education is really all about.

And what a great shame, isn't it, that so many were turned away from what really could have been a lifelong source of pleasure and joy.

But I  still don't like Gershwin; I don't like Jazz, either, it's not the teacher's fault. I just don't like Gershwin.

And like Cat Stevens used to sing, if you want to sing out, sing out. And if you want to be free, be free. There's a million things to be, you know that there are.

[BarbStAubrey]

I've been thinking on music during this time period - so many stories written about this time just before or during the Industrial Revolution and we forgot the Democratization the Industrial Revolution had on music - the average person's wages made it possible for them to attend concerts and the mass production of instruments along with the better development of strings for string instruments, even the piano made the cost of instruments to be within the grasp of most households - we do not see this in the  homes of the Cranford women but then they were not grasping the modernization of the Industrial Revolution.

The Romanticism movement popular at the time was a reaction against the Industrial Revolution. It involved pretty much any artistic medium, including literature and art.

As society was becoming more advanced and science progressed, people felt that they were becoming more and more distanced from nature (which they were.) Many people looked back to nature and tried to capture the mystery of it and the awe that it inspired. With that I wondered if the walk in the garden was an answer by Gaskell to the loss of nature she may have been feeling

Often music, poetry, paintings had themes of heroism or stories of an epic nature. Ghosts and spirits were another recurring theme in novels and poetry. The Romantic period focused on the sublime, things of such grandeur and scale that your emotions were ignited and inspired.

Beethoven is said to have started this movement in music, or at least bridged the gap between the Classical Music era and the Romantic period. His third symphony is an example of the theme of heroism.