An Evening with Master Poets and Composers

              AN EVENING WITH MASTER POETS AND COMPOSERS



By Two Daughters of Minnesota



Marie Gjertsen Fischer
 Melologist and Reader


Meta Schumann
 Concert Soprano and Pianist





GENERAL EXTENSION DIVISION THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA




THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA EXTENSION SERVICE THE STATE WIDE CAMPUS


Figure

Marie Gjertsen Fischer




Town Hall, Lakefield, Thursday, Dec. 2





Marie Gjertsen Fischer



The General Extension Division of the University of Minnesota takes great pleasure in offering its patrons the services of Marie Gjertsen Fischer, reader and melologuist, whose work has the highest and unqualified approval of the public and the music and dramatic critics of this country.




Mrs. Fischer has made a special study of melodramas, such as 
Enoch Arden,
 words by Tennyson, music by Rich. Strauss; 
Bergliot,
 by Bjornson-Grieg (Norwegian and English); 
King Robert of Sicily,
 by Longfellow-Cole; 
Hiawatha's Wooing,
 Longfellow-Cole; 
Brushwood,
 Read-Tirindelli, and other works of a similar nature, written by our greatest poets and composers.  Arthur Koerner, a young Minnesota composer, was inspired by her in the creation of a new art-form called 
Spoken Song,
 and has written some of the most charming and dainty compositions ever produced for the speaking voice with musical accompaniment.




However, Mrs. Fischer presents the light and humorous as well as the more serious and instructive.  She sways her audiences to tears or laughter with equal ease, and the deeper note which sets us thinking is not lacking.  Her interpretation of Kipling is dramatic in the extreme while her reading of such a work as 
King Robert of Sicily
 has the quality of a beautiful sermon.




Mrs. Fischer is endowed with a happy combination of the mental, spiritual and physical qualities which distinguish our leading American women and she appeals to the eye as well as to the heart and mind.  She is the daughter of the late Rev. M. Falk-Gjertsen and wife of Carlo Fischer, former solo cellist of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, whose equally successful artistic companion she has been on many of his tours in this country and abroad.




DR. VICTOR NILSSON IN THE MINNEAPOLIS JOURNAL


Marie Gjertsen Fischer is easily among the first as a reader of poetry, drama and songs in the Northwest.  When the artist in her rich and melodious voice, always pitched true to the key of the composition, began the melologue, 
Daybreak,
 by Longfellow in the van der Berg setting, it was almost impossible not to realize that she was singing.  Mrs. Fischer seemed throughout the delightful afternoon to be taking the singing part in modern song, with its complicated harmonics among which the human voice rises as in intensification of speech, but with all the modulation of which the richest instrument is capable.




SAN DIEGO, CALIF., SAN DIEGO UNION


When Marie Fischer stepped upon the stage, she won her audience before she even uttered so much as speech.  She is a handsome woman with an air and carriage which would become a queen.  Her voice is of unusually beautiful quality, and she is instantly recognized as a woman whose art is in her life.




DES MOINES, IA., REGISTER AND LEADER


Marie Gjertsen Fischer won her audience at her first appearance and held it throughout the entire evening.  She has a fine physique, pleasing voice and ease of manner that arrests and commands attention.




THE CHICAGO MUSIC NEWS


Marie Gjertsen Fischer's beautiful stage presence and magnetic personality alone would win her an admiring audience.  She has a marvelous delivery and her beautifully modulated voice answered every requirement of a very exacting program.






Meta Schumann



Meta Schumann requires neither introduction nor recommendation to the patrons of the University Extension Course, as no artist appearing under this auspices has won more general approval than this charming young singer with the clear, bell-like soprano voice.




Meta Schumann is a Minnesota girl, having been born and reared in Minneapolis.  When still a very young child she began the study of the piano with Gustavus Johnson and it is due to this excellent master that she became so highly proficient on this difficult instrument.  But it was her glorious natural voice which claimed her most serious attention and in this she had the guidance of no less a teacher than Mme. Mastenelli, herself a distinguished pupil of the leading voice teachers of London, Paris and Italy.




Meta Schumann recently returned from a three years stay in London where she completed her musical studies with the renowned Lamperti exponent, John Acton.  While abroad Meta Schumann appeared frequently in concerts and recitals and won the warmest approval of the leading English musicians and critics.  On her return last year she was engaged as soloist with the St. Paul Symphony Orchestra and her success firmly established her position as one of the leading singers of the Northwest.




The following criticism is characteristic of Miss Schumann's success:




SPRINGFIELD ADVANCE, Brown County, Minn.


Miss Schumann's soprano renditions were of a high order.  Her clear, sympathetic and wonderfully flexible voice, support by a charming ease and assurance and with the additional admirable quality of distinct enunciation captivated her audience at the very outset.  The University Extension Bureau should receive deserving credit in the selection of such an artist.


Figure

Meta Schumann






A FEW PRESS OPINIONS

MARIE GJERTSEN FISCHER


DR. CARYL B. STORRS IN THE MINNEAPOLIS TRIBUNE


Mrs. Fischer is an exceptionally tasteful and discreet exponent of the art of dramatic reading.  The fault of most dramatic readers is over-emphasis of posture, gesture, tone-color and vocal diversity; they leave nothing to the imagination and attempt the impossible task of actual, instead of suggestive, impersonation.  From these faults Mrs. Fischer is free, and the keen pleasure one derives from her work is that of looking at a beautiful woman and hearing her tell a dramatic story artistically; the significance of her method being at all times that of suggestion and not of obviousness.  Chief interest in Mrs. Fischer's program centered in four spoken songs written and dedicated to her by Arthur Koerner, a young Minnesota composer.  Mr. Koerner has written exquisite incidental music for these poems, following them through their every mood of philosophy, sadness, resignation, merriment, abandon, devil-may-careness and delicate minglings of laughter and tears.  They were wonderfully read by Mrs. Fischer.




H. F. LEURS, IN THE OWATONNA JOURNAL-CHRONICLE


It was a most delightful and inspiring program which Marie Gjertsen Fischer presented under the auspices of Pillsbury Academy, encores being the rule for all numbers, and several times encores of encores.  Mrs. Fischer is the peer of any reader who has appeared in Owatonna.  A beautiful woman of perfect poise and gracious presence, she has a magnificent voice capable of the widest variety of inflection and into her work puts perfect intelligence guided by rare artistic perception.  Her work is delightfully free from affectation or extravagant gesture and grips one by the power of her inflection, her rare appreciation of the exact value of a pause, the dramatic intensity which Mrs. Fischer reserves for exactly the right moment.  The captivating quality of her work, only enhanced by her artistic capability is the simple but absolute sincerity which rings in every phrase.  One feels her personal delight and enthusiasm in every tone or word.  It is the sine qua non of art.




NORTHFIELD, MINN., Independent


Marie Gjertsen Fischer, is a dramatic reader of a high order.  Her striking personality and remarkable facility for adaptation make her readings strangely impressive.  In humorous, pathetic and impassioned speaking she is alike masterly.




RED WING, MINN., Daily Republican


Marie Gjertsen Fischer read the poem 
Enoch Arden
 with great feeling and expression.  She inflected marvelously in the difficult parts of the poem, and gave a good representation of the different characters therein, and their mode of speech and action.




CHICAGO, ILL., Musical Leader and Concertgoer


Marie Gjertsen Fischer has dramatic gifts of a high order.  Her voice is under perfect control and is splendidly modulated.  In two shorter numbers, as well as in 
The Portrait,
 she carried her audience with her and aroused the strongest enthusiasm.



META SCHUMANN

Meta Schumann sang two songs by Grieg with orchestra.  Meta Schumann possesses a light, even, and very sympathetic soprano voice.  Her intonation is true and especially beautiful in the middle register.  Her enunciation is admirably distinct.  This feature of her singing was especially marked in her excellent rendition of the well-known old English song, 
Nymphs and Shepherds Come Away,
 sung as an encore.
The largest elements in Meta Schumann's equipment are her obvious refinement of style and her altogether excellent diction.—

St. Paul Pioneer Press, Feb. 1, 1914.



Miss Meta Schumann, soprano, sang two Grieg songs, 
A Swan
 and 
Sunshine Song,
 with orchestral accompaniment.  She has a light, clear voice of pure lyric timbre, pleasing in quality and precise in intonation.  She has a charming presence and a modest bearing.  Her delivery is careful and well studied.—


St. Paul Daily News, Feb. 1, 1914.




Miss Schumann possesses a beautiful voice, splendidly schooled and excellently adapted to the interpretation of the songs of Grieg.  Of the two songs, which she had chosen to sing, the first was especially well adapted to her individual style of interpretation.  The first she sang in German and such was the excellence of her pronounciation that not a single word was lost.  The second, 
Solveig's Song,
 was sung in English and the lyrical character of this beautiful composition was artistically emphasized.  (Translation.) —


Deutsche Volks Zeitung, St. Paul, Minn.




The recital at Selfridges was of exceptional interest as the vocalist was an American, and sang the old English songs with true English enthusiasm.  Meta Schumann possesses a wonderfully sympathetic voice, of which she has splendid control, and her sustained songs, as well as the lighter songs, are sung with ease and assurance, the voice retaining its beautiful quality through all her songs.—


London Daily Mail, Feb. 28, 1913.