Important Anniversaries of 2023 Part IV: Julia Crane

Specially written by Irene Gómez for Strings By Mail Articles.

2023 has offered the opportunity to realize some interesting and contrasting facts, such as the birth of Wes Montgomery, Bach’s moving to Leipzig, Liszt arriving to Paris and the passing of the great American pedagogue Julia Crane. Today, let’s remember Julia Crane.

1923, the passing of American pedagogue Julia Crane

Julia Crane was born in 1855. She is remembered for having transformed the concept of the music education. She graduated from and later taught at the Postdam Normal School. She taught in Pennsylvania and New York and studied voice with Spanish singer and vocal pedagogue Manuel Garcia at the Royal Academy of London. Coming back to her hometown she changed the perspective of the training of music teachers.

Indeed, music education for teachers was mainly limited to conducting the chorus, teaching voice privately and supporting social activities. Crane proposed that there should be an established curriculum with an artistic and human concept for the training of music teachers. She defended the idea that music teachers at the Normal School need a complete education with high artistic standards, and that music should be taught with the same level of importance as writing or arithmetic. She emphasized the importance of supporting the children not only until they master the basic challenges that music demands, but also beyond that.

She emphasized the importance of good singing, learning fundamentals such as how to breath correctly. She was an inspiring figure for the development of the teaching music as a science, giving a new value to music education for teachers. In 1886 she received permission from the state superintendent of education to create a new program. The school she created in 1887 under her own name, The Crane School Music became part of the State University of New York (Suny) by 1948.

SOURCES
The New Grove Dictionary of music and musicians. Second Edition. Oxford University Press 2001.
Claudson William D. The philosophies of Julia Crane. Journal of Research in Music Education. Winter, 1969 Vol. 17 No. 4
potsdam.edu
northcountrypublicradio.org

Classical guitarist Irene Gómez regularly contributes to Strings By Mail through her teaching and performance videos as well as articles. She is a Strings By Mail Sponsored Artist, teaches guitar at the National University in Bogotá, Colombia, and performs worldwide. She recently released her fifth CD “Songs of My Life / Canciones de Mi Vida“. www.irenegomez.com

Previous Irene Gomez anniversary articles:
2016 2017 2018 2019