Cheerfulness is one of hope’s many companions.
- Wondrous is the strength of cheerfulness, and its power of endurance – the cheerful man will do more in the same time, will do it; better, will preserve it longer, than the sad or sullen. [attributed to Thomas Carlyle]
- I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition. [attributed to Martha Washington]
- While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. [attributed to H. G. Wells]
“Cheerfulness is broadly defined as an individual’s habitual tendencies in presenting cheerful mood, laughing and smiling frequently and easily, and possessing a cheerful presentation and composure both alone and in social interactions . . .” Some people give the impression that nothing can defeat them. Thus, cheerfulness is the emotion that underlies hope and optimism.
“The benefits of cheerfulness, as a mood state and personality trait, are widespread in the literature concerning subjective well-being and physical health.” “For millennia, the smile has been recognised as a powerful communication device, offering benefits to both giver and receiver with few drawbacks.” Still: “The word ‘cheerfulness’ occurs rarely or not at all in contemporary psychiatric writings. Nonetheless, this theme was studied and led to new therapeutic concepts in France at the beginning of the nineteenth century.”
“People who are cheerful have better social relationships. This might be the case because happy faces communicate an invitation to interact. Thus, happy faces might have a strong motivational effect on others.” “Cheerfulness is a dominant factor in current measures of the sense of humor and explains both, the disposition to engaging in smiling and laughter, as well as humor behaviors, and trait seriousness and bad mood are antagonistic to the elicitation of amusement (albeit for different reasons).” Cheerfulness is particularly important during dark times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. “. . . interventions to improve adaptive humor at work can be a useful resource to deal with workplace stress and foster employee well-being.”
Cheerfulness can refer to a present state of being, or a long-term trait. “The State-Trait Cheerfulness Inventory-State Version (STCI-S) measures three states of cheerfulness, seriousness, and bad mood as the temperamental basis of humor.” “. . . the STCI is a reliable and valid questionnaire for assessing the temperamental basis of sense of humor.” Trait-cheerfulness elevates response to hospital clowns.
Real
True Narratives
- Benjamin Taylor, ed., Saul Bellow: Letters (Viking, 2010). "The letters show a man constantly wresting high spirits from low, and forbidding himself 'the newest wrinkle in anguish.'"
- Christopher Simon Sykes, David Hockney: The Biography, 1937-1975: A Rake’s Progress (Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 2012): “Hockney has the sort of innate cheerfulness that is regarded as a professional liability in the art world.”
- Rosamond Bernier, Some of My Lives: A Scrapbook Memoir (Straus & Giroux, 2012): “This is a relentlessly cheerful book, complete with love and marriage at the end.”
- Garrison Keillor, Cheerfulness (Prairie Home Productions, 2023): “Part memoir, part self-aware victory lap, Garrison Keillor’s Cheerfulness points the spotlight of positive perspective on himself, as well as on anyone within ear- or eyeshot of his optimistic influence.”
- Timothy Hampton, Cheerfulness: A Literary and Cultural History (Zone Books, 2022).
Technical and Analytical Readings
Photographs
Documentary and Educational Films
Imaginary
Fictional Narratives
Novels:
- Nina Stibbe, Reasons to be Cheerful: A Novel (Little, Brown & Company, 2019): “. . . Or maybe I’m just a sucker for a novel that opens with a British dental surgeon named JP Wintergreen injecting himself with lignocaine and attempting to pull his own teeth. Lizzie Vogel is a wise and cheerful guide to the absurdities and injustices in the dental surgery where she works.”
Poetry
Remember me when I am gone away, / Gone far away into the silent land; / When you can no more hold me by the hand, / Nor I half turn to go yet turning stay.
Remember me when no more day by day / You tell me of our future that you plann'd: / Only remember me; you understand / It will be late to counsel then or pray.
Yet if you should forget me for a while / And afterwards remember, do not grieve: / For if the darkness and corruption leave / A vestige of the thoughts that once I had,
Better by far you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad.
[Christina Georgina Rossetti, “Remember”]
Other poems:
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude”
- Pablo Neruda, “Ode to Sadness”
- William Wordsworth, “What Heavenly Smiles! O Lady Mine”
- James Joyce, “Alone”
From the dark side:
- John Keats, “Ode on Melancholy”
Music: Composers, artists, and major works
Johannes Brahms, Serenade No. 1 in D Major, Op. 11 (1857) (approx. 43-48’): “In the 1850s, when Brahms was still a young composer and concert pianist struggling for recognition, he spent the last four months of each year in the small city of Detmold in west Germany. There he served as court pianist for the ruling prince, conductor of the local choral society and piano teacher for the princess. His salary supported him for the rest of the year, and left time enough for composing and strolling in the nearby forest.” “. . . the Serenade feels a bit like a precursor of Brahms’s full-scale symphonies. Here we have an opening allegro, an adagio, a minuet and a finale, much as we’d expect in a symphony, but Brahms drops in two extra scherzos, giving us six movements in all, a sort of descendent of Mozart’s Serenades.” “Posthumous analysts have enumerated the influences of Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, Beethoven -- even Schumann -- in this sweetly bucolic work.” Best recorded performances are conducted by Toscanini in 1935, Bongartz in 1962, Kertész in 1962 ***, Abbado in 1981, Bertini in 1982, Armenian in 1995, Handley in 1998, Mackerras in 1998, Chailly in 2014, and Martín in 2017.
Johannes Brahms, Serenade No. 2 in A Major, Op. 16 (1859) (approx. 29-36’), is “in the mode of a serenade: tuneful, largely cheerful, in six movements. In it he proved himself entirely competent with the orchestra, but not yet with a particularly distinctive voice.” “. . . the biggest factor differentiating Brahms’s serenades from his symphonies could be termed ‘mood.’ When it came to symphonies, Brahms felt that he owed his predecessors and the public something of high purpose and artistic merit. . . In Brahms’s serenades . . . relaxation and warmth prevail.” “The lilt, the warmth, the gracious melodies, and the enlivening cross rhythms that give distinction to a work that essentially fits the definition of a serenade as music strictly for easy listening.” Best recorded performances are conducted by Toscanini in 1935, Kertész in 1962 ***, Bernstein in 1968, Boult in 1978, Tilson Thomas in 1991, Chailly in 2014, Gardiner in 2018, and Iván Fischer in 2021.
The Stanley Brothers, Ralph and Carter, mastered the art of bluegrass music. “(They) represent the quintessential ‘mountain sound’ of bluegrass music. The unmistakable sound of Ralph’s gritty tenor vocals, the driving banjo, and the soaring duets, quartets, and trademark high-baritone trios make this band a favorite of many . . .” Even when they sang of heartache, their banjo pickin’ and always-driving rhythms took sadness out of the picture. Their playlists are extensive.
Other bluegrass albums:
- Molly Tuttle & Golden Highway, “Crooked Tree” (2022) (62’)
- Hazel Dickens & Alice Gerrard, “Pioneering Women of Bluegrass” (1996) (68’)
- Mighty Poplar, “Mighty Poplar” (2023) (42’)
- Jesse Jones, Jacob Jolliff, Max Allard & Craig Butterfield, “EZRA” (2024) (39’)
“Little Feat is very possibly the last-man-standing example of what used to be the norm in American music, a fusion of a broad span of styles and genres into something utterly distinctive. They combined earthy, organic material with first-rate musicianship in a combination that transcends boundaries. Feat took California rock, funk, folk, jazz, country, rockabilly, and New Orleans swamp boogie and more, stirred it into a rich gumbo, and has been leading people in joyful dance ever since.” Founded in 1969, the group has produced a substantial output of appealing popular music, including many releases.
Swing music in American Jazz, mainly in the 1930s and 1940s:
- Benny Goodman, with his playlists; and
- Ray Anthony and His Orchestra, with their playlists.
John Field, Piano Concerti 1-7 (approx. 225’):
- Piano Concerto No. 1 in E-flat Major, Op. 27, H 27 (1799) (approx. 20’)
- Piano Concerto No. 2 in A-flat Major, H 31 (ca. 1811) (approx. 36’)
- Piano Concerto No. 3 in E-flat Major, Op. 32, H 29 (1811) (approx. 32-38’)
- Piano Concerto No. 4 in E-flat Major, H 28 (1814) (approx. 33-35’)
- Piano Concerto No. 5 in C Major, “L’Indendie par l’orage”, H 39 (1815) (approx. 27-29’)
- Piano Concerto No. 6 in C Major, H 49 (1819) (approx. 31-35’)
- Piano Concerto No. 7 in C Major, H 58 (1822) (approx. 29’)
Double bass concertos by Johann Matthias Sperger:
- Double Bass Concerto No. 1 in D Major (1778) (approx 19’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 2 in E-flat Major, M.B. 4 (1778) (approx 22-25’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 3 in B-flat Major, M.B. 5 (approx 23’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 4 in F Major, M.B. 6 (approx 23-25’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 8 in D Major, M.B. 10 (approx 23’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 15 in D Major, M.B. 17 (approx 25-28’)
- Double Bass Concerto No. 18 in C Minor, M.B. 20 (approx 26’)
Other compositions:
- Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber, Harmonia Artificioso-Ariosa (1696) (approx. 82-96’)
- In his Rondo in D Major for Piano and Orchestra, K. 382 (1782) (approx. 10’), Mozart takes us through a series of variations on a simple theme, evoking a vision of a happy child at play or perhaps an adult at blissful peace with the world.
- Carl Maria von Weber, Introduction, Theme and Variations, Op. posth. (1815) (9-13’)
- Willem de Fesch, Concerti Grossi and Violin Concerti; 8 Violin Concerti, Op. 10 (1741) (approx. 65’)
- Charles Gounod, Petite Symphonie for wind instruments (1885) (approx. 19-20’)
Albums:
- Bob Brozman, “A Truckload of Blues” (1991) (53’)
- Jesse Fuller, “San Francisco Bay Blues” (1962) (37’)
- Johannes Pramsohler & Ensemble Diderot, “Concertos pour Violon: The Beginnings of the Violin Concerto in France” album
- Spiers & Boden, “Fallow Ground” (2021) (58’)
Music: songs and other short pieces
“When You're Smiling” (lyrics), performed
- by Louis Armstrong
- by Billie Holiday
- by the Art Pepper Quartet
- by Louis Prima
- by Michael Bublé
From others:
- Franz Schubert (composer), “Die Fröhlichkeit” (Being Cheerful), D. 262 (1815) (lyrics)
- Schubert, “Frohsinn” (Being Cheerful), D. 520 (1817) (lyrics)
Visual Arts
- Valentin Serov, Portrait of Anna Benois (1908)
- John Heinrich Ramberg, Papageno (c. 1770)
- Gerrit van Honthorst, Merry (1623)
Film and Stage
- Mary Poppins, about a nanny who gives the children of a dour man a different perspective, the one they wanted in their unspoiled wisdom
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas, a cautionary children’s tale against cheerlessness