Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1White, Andrew Dickson
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Autobiography of Andrew Dickson White — Volume 1
White, Andrew Dickson
Cornell University; Diplomats -- United States -- Biography; White, Andrew Dickson, 1832-1918
The men he summoned about him were, in the main,
admirably fitted to aid him. Dearest of all to me, though
several years my senior, was Henry Simmons Frieze,
professor of Latin. I had first met him at the University of
Berlin, had then traveled with him through Germany and
Italy, and had found him one of the most charming men
I had ever met--simple, modest, retiring to a fault, yet a
delightful companion and a most inspiring teacher. There
was in him a combination which at first seemed singular;
but experience has since shown me that it is by no means
unnatural, for he was not only an ideal professor of Latin,
but a gifted musician. The first revelation of this latter
quality was made to me in a manner which showed his
modesty. One evening during our student days at Berlin,
at a reception given by the American minister of that
period,--Governor Vroom of New Jersey,--I heard the
sound of music coming from one of the more distant
apartments. It was a sonata of Beethoven, wonderfully
interpreted, showing not only skill but deep feeling. On
my asking my neighbors who the performer might be,
no one seemed to know, until, at last, some one suggested
that it might be Professor Frieze. I made my way through
the crowd toward the room from which the sounds came,
but before arriving there the music had ended; and when I
met the professor shortly afterward, and asked him if he
had been the musician, his reply was so modest and evasive
that I thought the whole thing a mistake and said nothing
more about it. On our way to Italy some months
later, I observed that, as we were passing through Bohemia,
he jotted down in his note-book the quaint songs of the
peasants and soldiers, and a few weeks later still he gave an
exhibition of his genius. Sitting down one evening at the
piano on the little coasting steamer between Genoa and
Civit<a!> Vecchia, he began playing, and though it has
been my good fortune to hear all the leading pianists
of my time, I have never heard one who seemed to interpret
the masterpieces of music more worthily. At Ann Arbor
I now came to know him intimately. Once or twice a
week he came to my house, and, as mine was the only grand
piano in the town, he enjoyed playing upon it. His
extemporizations were flights of genius. At these gatherings
he was inspired by two other admirable musicians, one
being my dear wife, and the other Professor Brunnow, the
astronomer. Nothing could be more delightful than their
interpretations together of the main works of Beethoven
Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Weber, and other masters. On
one of these evenings, when I happened to speak of the
impression made upon me at my first hearing of a choral
in a German church, Frieze began playing Luther's hymn,
``Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott,'' throwing it into all
forms and keys, until we listened to his improvisations
in a sort of daze which continued until nearly midnight.
Next day, at St. Andrew's Church, he, as usual, had charge
of the organ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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