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SPEAKER 1: This is a production of Cornell University.
TIM PYPER: My name's Tim Pyper, and I'm joined today by singers Zachary Wadsworth and Olivia Moore. And today, we will be presenting music that was written during the lifetime of Andrew Dickson White. Of particular note are the songs by Charles Ives, very early songs written in the 1890s, when he was a very young man.
And I will be ending the program today with an organ voluntary from a little known American composer, written in the middle of the 19th century. But we'll start with a couple of duets, first a very melodramatic "When I Am Dead," and then followed by an English folk song arrangement, "Under the Greenwood Tree."
[MUSIC - TIM PYPER, ZACHARY WADSWORTH, AND OLIVIA MOORE, "WHEN I AM DEAD"]
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: (SINGING) Oh, twine when I am dead a wreath of roses--
OLIVIA MOORE: (SINGING) Oh, twine when I am dead a wreath--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --of roses gathered--
OLIVIA MOORE: --of roses--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --where we used to--
OLIVIA MOORE: --of roses gathered--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --wander.
OLIVIA MOORE: --where we used to wander.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: And in my hand, oh, lay the poor dead rosebud--
OLIVIA MOORE: And in my hand, oh, lay the poor dead rosebud--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --the one you gave that day when you--
OLIVIA MOORE: --the one you--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --were fonder.
OLIVIA MOORE: --gave that day when you were fonder.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: And in my hand, oh, lay the poor dead rosebud--
OLIVIA MOORE: And in my hand, oh, lay the poor dead--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --the one you gave--
OLIVIA MOORE: --rosebud--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --that day when you were fonder.
OLIVIA MOORE: --and did leave me there alone.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: (SINGING) And did leave me there alone and unlamented, for while I die for you, I die contented. And when the moon looks down and the dews are weeping, I still shall dream of you in that long, lonely sleeping. And when the moon looks down and the dews are weeping, I'll dream of you in that long, lonely sleeping. I still shall dream of you.
[MUSIC - TIM PYPER, ZACHARY WADSWORTH, AND OLIVIA MOORE, "UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE"]
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: (SINGING) Under the greenwood tree, who loves to lie with me, and tune his merry note unto the sweet bird's throat. Come hither, come hither--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: --come hither.
OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: Here shall he see--
OLIVIA MOORE: Here shall he see--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --here no enemy--
OLIVIA MOORE: --no enemy--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --but winter--
OLIVIA MOORE: --but winter--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: --and rough weather.
OLIVIA MOORE: Who doth ambition shun and loves to lie in the sun seeking the food he eats and pleased with what he gets.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: Come hither, come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
OLIVIA MOORE: Come hither.
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: Here shall he see--
OLIVIA MOORE: Here shall he see--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --no enemy--
OLIVIA MOORE: --no enemy--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: --but winter--
OLIVIA MOORE: --but winter--
ZACHARY WADSWORTH AND OLIVIA MOORE: --and rough weather.
KENNETH CLARK: Good afternoon, and welcome to Sage Wednesdays, our program of words and music addressing issues of contemporary public concern and the personal pursuit of meaning and purpose. This program is sponsored by Cornell United Religious Work and the Cornell Department of Music.
Today's program will touch upon aspects of what could be possibly called the public philosophy of Cornell's first president and co-founder, Andrew Dickson White, whose birthday was on the 7th of November. A public philosophy is committed to the expansion of democracy and its ideals to a broad populace, and is concerned about threats that contract democracy and create advantages only for a few.
These ideas were inherent in the founding of this institution by AD White and Ezra Cornell as the land-grant university of the State of New York, as the Land-Grant Act of 1862 sought to create the opportunities for higher education for a broader populace. In the effort to create an institution where any person could find instruction in any study, White laid the groundwork for Cornell to define itself as a private institution with a public mission.
Today's program is the last Sage Wednesdays event which will host a speaker. We will continue in the next few weeks with Midday Music for Organ, the series that is organized by the Department of Music and hosted here at the Sage Chapel.
We are honored today to have with us as our speaker an esteemed local and campus historian, Carol Kammen. Carol will be introduced to us by Elaine Engst, University Archivist. As she comes, please feel free to help yourself to additional refreshments that are at the rear of the chapel.
ELAINE ENGST: Thank you. As Reverend Clark has said, we are here today to commemorate the 176th birthday of Andrew Dickson White and the 90th anniversary of his death in 1918. It's especially fitting that we're meeting in Sage Chapel. Architecture always held a particular fascination for Andrew Dickson White.
As a young man, he was influenced by the work of John Ruskin and by viewing the great Gothic cathedrals of Europe. He collected about 1,200 books and numerous photographs documenting architectural history. And in 1871, he convinced Cornell's trustees to establish a department of architecture and call a professor to it.
He encouraged the appointment of Charles Babcock, whose own interest in Ruskin and in Gothic Revivalism matched White's own sensibilities. Babcock's buildings on campus, including this beautiful Sage Chapel, reflect his collaboration with White, along with his own tastes. White obviously loved the building, since he decided to spend all eternity here.
[LAUGHTER]
To follow White's footsteps to other places he loved, I would encourage you to take a walk down to Uris Library. Libraries, of course, were another of White's passions. In 1887, he offered to present his historical library of 30,000 volumes to the University on the condition that the University build a fireproof building to house it. Go into the wonderful AD White Library originally built for his collection, which stands as another of his monuments. Susette Newberry, my colleague, will be actually providing a tour of the White Library immediately after this program.
But to talk about White's less tangible, but even more important, contributions to the development of Cornell University, I'm delighted to introduce Carol Kammen. Carol is particularly qualified to address this topic. She's taught for many years at Cornell and elsewhere, and she, as mentioned, currently serves as the Tompkins County Historian.
She's lectured widely, directed many engaging local history and educational projects, and served as a consultant to various historical societies. She's written or edited 15 books on various aspects of Cornell, New York State, and local history. Readers of The Ithaca Journal always look forward to her newspaper columns on fascinating aspects of our community's history, and her writings have broadened our appreciation of the place we call home.
For her achievements, she was named the New York State Public Historian of the Year in 2004, 2005, and in 2007, she was recognized with an Award of Distinction by the American Association of State and Local History, its highest honor. It's been my own particular pleasure and privilege to work with her on the Cornell history books, Cornell University, Glorious to View and First-Person Cornell, and her next book, Part and Apart, The Black Experience at Cornell 1865 to 1945, which will be released in February-- we hope.
I especially admired the way she taught her freshman writing seminar, which, for more than 20 years, provided students with a greater appreciation of the remarkable history of the University. She made Cornell history come alive for those students, and I know that, today, she will make that history come alive for you. Thank you.
[MUSIC - TIM PYPER AND OLIVIA MOORE, "IN AUTUMN"]
OLIVIA MOORE: (SINGING) The sky seems true above thee, where [? eyes ?] [? drew ?] on the tree. The birds seem true all the summer through, but all proof falls to me. What is the one good thing we knew? Life, love, or death, or what, since lips that sang I love thee now say I love thee not.
[MUSIC - TIM PYPER AND ZACHARY WADSWORTH, "BECAUSE OF YOU"]
ZACHARY WADSWORTH: (SINGING) What have you done for me, dear one, with eyes so true? This grim old world looks golden bright because of you. What have you done for me, dear heart, with lips so true? The words of others kindly seem because of you, of you, because of you.
What have you done for me, dear heart, with hands so true? The clasp of others' heartfelt feels because of you. Queen of my heart and queen of queens with love so true, the years would drag with leaden feet were it not for you, for you, were it not for you, were it not for you.
CAROL KAMMEN: Thank you so much. It is a great privilege to be here. Speaking in Sage Chapel is an absolute honor. The theme for the chapel series is Be the Change, and what I wanted to talk about today are the ways in which Andrew Dickson White went against tradition in order to change.
Andrew Dickson White knew universities. He bolted out of Hobart College thinking that the education there was beneath him. He declined to go to Trinity College. He was not interested in that education, and he settled at Yale. College education in the 1850s was for the well-off, which Andrew Dickson White was, and for those who were heading for the ministry. It had a set curriculum, and it was one size fit all. It was denominationally-attached, and the faculty instructed, and the students recited.
There were lots of calls for reform, but nothing significant happened until 1862. But by then, Andrew Dickson White had graduated from Yale, and he had gone off to graduate studies in Europe, going to England, to France, and especially to Germany, where he was so struck by the dynamic teaching at research universities.
On his return from Europe, he came home, was invited to teach at Yale, and knew that his new ideas would never go over at Yale. And isn't it interesting how Cornellians always love to dump on Yale, but we do. But he knew he couldn't go to Yale, so he went instead to the University of Michigan, where, along with teaching a very dynamic class in history, modern history, which was unheard of, he also created for himself on paper what he called air castles, or an ideal university, a place at which he'd like to teach. And, obviously, he was creating for himself a future.
It didn't happen at that time, but by 1865, when White was in the New York Senate, he had the opportunity to write the charter incorporation for the Morrill Land Grant College, which became Cornell University. In that document, there are three things I'd like to talk about, having to do-- how White went against tradition.
In the first place, the document is written that this institution would educate persons-- unheard of. Could a foreign student come?-- wrote a father from England. Could foreign students come to this place where persons would be educated? The answer was yes. Could a slightly colored boy come from Bermuda? And the answer was yes. Could women come? And the answer, again, was yes.
But there was a caution. Dr. Edward White of the Harvard Medical School cautioned that if women were to go to a school of higher education, it would take so much energy to learn what was being taught that all their blood would rush to their brain, and the result of that would be that their uterus would shrink, and it would stop the population. It would masculinize women.
So abroad in this country, there was a great feeling that women should not engage in higher education, but Ezra Cornell was in favor. I'm not sure he was in favor of what it's ended up like, but he was in favor of educating women, and Andrew Dickson White was in favor of educating academically-qualified persons. So "person" went against tradition.
The second thing that went against tradition, and it's a privilege to talk about this here, is the fact that White wrote into the charter that this would be a non-sectarian school. It would not be linked to any denomination or creed. Its minister would-- its president would not be a minister.
White and Cornell ran into a good deal of trouble in New York. A number of ministers preached against this godless university. The newspapers in Rochester complained about what was going on in Ithaca, and White and Cornell were called to a Senate hearing in Albany in 1874.
And if you'll let me, I'd like you to-- I'd like to read just a short piece from that hearing. In asking about Sage College and the funding for it-- or Sage Chapel and the funding for it-- I'm sorry-- Wade explained that clergymen would be selected from various denominations to preach from time to time. This meant every week there would be a different clergyman. There would be no connection to any one denomination.
The Senator, perplexed, said, let me understand what you mean by various. Do you mean from all denominations? And White said, from all denominations, yes. And the senator said, from all religious denominations? And White said, from all religious denominations.
And the senator's still trying to get it right, said, each man to be at liberty to conduct the services according to his own method? And White simply said-- for White, this is a very short answer-- he simply said yes. The senator said, would you include in that, I suppose, Jews, as well as Christians?
And here, White's answer is very important. That would certainly be in accordance with the spirit of our charter. We have several Jewish students in our institution, and among them, some of our best students. And I would never sanction anything which would infringe on their privileges, deprive them of their rights, or tend to degrade them in any [? manner. ?] This was a non-sectarian school to which you could come if you were from any or of all, or even of no, religious background-- another against-tradition move.
The other thing that White did was create in the charter the centrality of the library and of laboratories. This is significant because the minute you say that there is knowledge for all of us to learn, in what White called known knowledge, stuff in books, but there was also knowledge to be gained by questioning this and testing it in laboratories, or in seminaries, as they were called-- seminars today, but in seminaries.
You then changed the whole balance of what happened in a classroom. No longer was the faculty to simply know everything and pour it into the empty vessel of the student. And no longer was the student's job to simply to parrot back that education given him, but now it was a system where people would question. The faculty would research, would announce its research findings, and students would question what was going on.
The whole dynamic of education began to change, and these three wonderful markers are the foundation for the modern research university we know and revere today. But White was also a historian, which meant that he loved the past, and he equated the past with beauty. And he believed in tradition.
So while he was willing to overturn some traditions, he also wanted to see that this University would continue the tradition of maintaining and producing an environment of beauty. Now, most of us, when we talk about Cornell, talk about the physical beauty here, and this is a gorgeous setting. But White wanted something else.
He thought at Yale, the buildings were lacking in poetical element. They were little more than barracks. He complained that at Brown and at Harvard, there was nothing in place for any reason other than utility. White did not like stone row. They were not the kinds of buildings he wanted at his university.
He wanted Sage College. He wanted Sage Chapel. He wanted the AD White House, with all of the columns and corbels and ornamentation that reminds us of the past. He saw nature at Cornell as nourishing, but he wanted students also to realize that the works of man-- and he used the word man, and we don't use it today-- but the works of man, mankind, were here in the settings and the buildings. And they came about, for a phrase that sounds tremendously 21st century, because of the earnest agency of human beings.
He believed in that creative spirit within us, and he thought living in this spirit was something important for us, and it was important for students, that we would take our own selves more seriously, and that we would take our endeavors with great understanding. He said nothing could be more intellectual and have more moral value to students than to be in a place of beauty.
He fought continuously what he considered to be the mean trustee economy because every time there was a building that was going to go up, and the price was listed as something, there were at least two trustees on the board always saying, we can do it for less. And White kept saying, for $3,000 more, they could have had a beautiful building. And he was very against this sort of shortsighted, mean kind of economy.
Instead, he wanted Cornell to be more than hard, dry, unattractive boxes. He wanted beauty for uplift. And so White went out and bought portraits and casts, models, and books so that when Cornell opened, it had a library of more than 35,000 books, mostly in crates because there was no place to put them at first. But books kept coming in to Cornell from all sorts of places.
He also dedicated the stone bench by Uris Library, that overlooks the valley, joining the beauty of what man can make and the God-given surroundings. He dedicated the Eddy Gate, believing it would be the great entrance to the University. He oversaw the creation of the beautiful stone bridge over Cascadilla Creek, something we drive over today and don't think about. Go walk over it. It's beautiful.
He brought the well-- the Venetian wellhead, that is now covered up, but in the spring, you can see it, because he wanted beauty here. He gave his architectural library, as Elaine said, and in 1912, he brought together the money so that Cornell could expand its facilities for women by creating Risley Hall, which really was his ideal air castle, a real castle here in Ithaca.
He wanted quadrangles and courtyards. He brought in a landscape architect, which the University couldn't afford, and never really followed his plans. He believed our surroundings, even at a radical university, mattered. He believed they influenced us to think highly of ourselves and of each other.
Most of what is radical and revolutionary about Cornell, most of that which goes against the past, that comes out of Cornell's charter, and much of what is beautiful about the campus is a direct result of the determination of Andrew Dickson White that it be so. Thank you.
KENNETH CLARK: Questions and answers.
CAROL KAMMEN: I don't have any.
KENNETH CLARK: [LAUGHS]
[LAUGHTER]
[? You ?] embarrass [? them. ?]
[LAUGHTER]
[? If you ?] wanted to open the floor for questions and answers, if you would, those in the [INAUDIBLE], come to this mic. Or if you can project your voice to be heard, please do so, but we want to open the floor for you to have a discussion with our historian [? of ?] [? the people. ?]
CAROL KAMMEN: Well, that was easy. Thank you all very much. [LAUGHS]
AUDIENCE: Over here.
CAROL KAMMEN: Is there a question? I'm sorry. I can't see.
AUDIENCE: Yeah.
CAROL KAMMEN: Yes, please.
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]. Thank you very much for your wonderful talk. This actually is not about Andrew Dickson White, except incidentally, that you mentioned a-- when he went to Germany, and the dynamic teaching tradition, or dynamic teaching was done there, that, could you amplify a little bit what it was that he-- that struck him?
CAROL KAMMEN: German education-- oh, I'm sorry-- German education was in a process of changing. And what White encountered were people not repeating what was in books, but, indeed, doing their own research and reporting to the classes on their research, which was a totally new and exciting thing, so that the teachers were not regurgitating, but excited about what they wanted.
White wanted dynamic teaching at this University, and believed that, by teaching your own research, you would then create an atmosphere where you are excited about what you're teaching, but that the students are also excited, but also get to buy in and ask questions. That was not done here. Thank you. That's a nice question. Susette?
SUSETTE NEWBERRY: You mentioned quite a few aspects about Andrew Dickson White that were really remarkable, on his own philosophies about pedagogy, and his real open-mindedness that was just so radical and so prescient. One of the things that I think is incredibly remarkable is his youth. He became president of Cornell at-- well, when the charter was signed into law, at the age of 32.
How remarkable was his youth, and what-- and was it something that people in the New York State Legislature commented on when they were signing into law the charter? And do you know of any other reactions to his youth?
CAROL KAMMEN: I don't know what the Legislature said, but he was respected in the-- when he was a senator in Albany. He was respected by the other senators. White was probably one of the most educated men in this country. He not only had a higher education from Yale, eventually, but he also had all of this education from abroad. So there was a great deal of respect for him as an educated man.
What frightened everybody was that he was not a preacher. And most heads-- most presidents of colleges were preachers. And the belief was that you needed to be a preacher in order to be a moral leader, and how could he be a moral leader if he were not a preacher? So it was the lack of divinity credentials that frightened people.
I mean, of course, and Cornell was attacked by a lot of people because of that, especially by President [? McComb ?] of Princeton, who thought everything about Cornell was just really awful. [LAUGHS] This-- too far, too radical for him, yeah.
SUSETTE NEWBERRY: And so it really wasn't an issue, then?
CAROL KAMMEN: [SIGHS] I think there were so many other issues. I haven't read of anybody complaining about him being too young. I have read about all these other issues. Elaine, do you know? Yeah, I've never read anything about it, Susette. But that's an interesting [? question. ?] He certainly was young, and that was-- but that he had so many other things going against him. They had a lot of other things to attack.
ELAINE ENGST: Could he have also been one of those people who was born middle-aged?
[LAUGHTER]
He wasn't even-- people didn't get a sense of him being a minister or [? deacon. ?]
CAROL KAMMEN: Could you all hear Elaine? That's a wonderful comment. White is probably someone who was born middle-aged, and that's probably true. There was a seriousness and a weightiness about him, so that I don't think age bothered people, but certainly the lack of ministerial degree did. Yeah.
The other thing I would add-- I didn't want to go on too long, and I kept thinking I was going to keep you here till Tuesday. The other thing that I think is important is that what Andrew Dickson-- and what Ezra Cornell thought about educating women was probably not the education that they ended up getting here, which was totally equal education with men.
It's probably not what Ezra Cornell thought. Andrew Dickson White started out wanting to educate women with appropriate abridgements, and he wrote an article about this. And Fred Muratori in the library helped me track down the article, which is signed by White.
And we also have the response to that article by the Reverend Samuel May of Syracuse, who was a great Congregational minister, abolitionist, and reform-- a person very interested in reform, who's-- really screeched at White, saying, if anybody's going to get the better education, it should be women, and not men. And you don't give them abridgements-- they can manage.
So it's interesting how they both evolved, and how Cornell became open academically, equally to men and women, which is nice. Thank you all.
[APPLAUSE]
[MUSIC - TIM PYPER]
Carol Kammen, a prominent local historian and the author of "Cornell: Glorious to View," examined A.D. White's contributions to the university's culture of intellectual and spiritual exploration, Nov. 12, 2008 in Sage Chapel. Kammen highlighted White's commitment to coeducation and nonsectarianism, and the centrality of the library and of beauty to his concept of the university.
