UNIVERSITY LIFE IN THE WEST- 1857-1864 273 



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 eva- 

 sive that I thought the whole thing a mistake and said no- 

 thing more about it. On our way to Italy some months 

 later,! 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 

 Civita 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 inter- 

 pret the masterpieces of music more worthily. At Ann Ar- 

 bor 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 ex- 

 temporizations 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. 



I. 18 



