Sophie Adele Wyss (5 July 189725 December 1983
) was a Swiss
soprano who made her career as a concert singer and broadcaster in the UK. She was noted for her performances of French works, many of them new to Britain, for giving the world premieres of
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
's orchestral song cycles ''
Our Hunting Fathers'' (1936) and ''
Les Illuminations
''Illuminations'' is an incomplete suite of prose poems by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, first published partially in ', a Paris literary review, in May–June 1886. The texts were reprinted in book form in October 1886 by Les publications de L ...
'' (1940), and for encouraging other composers to set English and French texts. Among those who wrote for her were
Lennox Berkeley
Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley (12 May 190326 December 1989) was an English composer.
Biography
Berkeley was born on 12 May 1903 in Oxford, England, the younger child and only son of Aline Carla (1863–1935), daughter of Sir James Char ...
,
Arnold Cooke
Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer.Biography by Eric Wetherell, British Music Society/ref>
Education
Cooke was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire, into a family of carpet manufacturers. As a child, ...
,
Roberto Gerhard
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.Malcolm MacDonald. 'Gerhard, Roberto' in ''Grove Music Onl ...
,
Elizabeth Maconchy
Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanu (; 19 March 1907 – 11 November 1994) was an Irish-English composer. She is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced.
Biography
Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was b ...
,
Peter Racine Fricker
Peter Racine Fricker (5 September 19201 February 1990) was an English composer, among the first to establish his career entirely after the Second World War. He lived in the US for the last thirty years of his life. Fricker wrote over 160 works in ...
,
Alan Rawsthorne and
Mátyás Seiber
Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartó ...
.
Life and career
Wyss was born to a musical family in
La Neuveville
La Neuveville (; german: Neuenstadt) is a municipality in the Jura bernois administrative district in the canton of Bern in Switzerland, located in the French-speaking Bernese Jura (''Jura Bernois'').
History
La Neuveville is first mention ...
,
Canton of Bern, Switzerland.
[ Her two sisters, Emilie Perret-Wyss and Colette Feschotte-Wyss, were also singers, and the three sometimes performed together.][Gyde, Humphrey]
Liner notes to Symposium Records CD 1409
retrieved 9 June 2014 She studied at the Geneva Conservatoire
, neighboring_municipalities= Carouge, Chêne-Bougeries, Cologny, Lancy, Grand-Saconnex, Pregny-Chambésy, Vernier, Veyrier
, website = https://www.geneve.ch/
Geneva ( ; french: Genève ) frp, Genèva ; german: link=no, Genf ; it, Ginevra ; ...
and the Basle Music Academy. In 1925 she married a British army officer, Captain Arnold Gyde, who had retired from the armed forces and become a publisher in London.[ He also became the treasurer of the Committee for the Promotion of New Music,][ founded in 1943.
Making her home in England, Wyss embarked on a career as a soloist.][ At first she failed to impress the critics. After an early recital in London in 1927, '']The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper '' The Sunday Times'' (f ...
'' said, "Miss Wyss has some pleasant notes in her voice, but the tone was tight in the upper range. A pronounced wobble, which appeared now and then, and a tendency to go out of tune showed that she has not yet gained sufficient control over her voice." By the 1930s her notices had improved from reserved to enthusiastic. ''The Times'' said that Wyss "possesses a soprano voice of an exquisitely yielding quality ... a singer so completely satisfying that we would not trust ourselves to say how much of the pleasure we derived from her performances was due to her or the music itself."
In 1936, together with Adolph Hallis
Adolph Hallis (4 July 1896 – 1987) was a South African pianist, composer and teacher.
Life
Hallis was born in Port Elizabeth, Cape Colony and travelled to England in his twenties, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Music; his teachers ...
, Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other ...
, Alan Rawsthorne and Christian Darnton, Wyss was a founder of the Hallis Concert Society, which gave a number of innovative concerts in London in the period 1936–1939. These included British premieres of both contemporary and historical British and European music, including works of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina
Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina ( – 2 February 1594) was an Italian composer of late Renaissance music. The central representative of the Roman School, with Orlande de Lassus and Tomás Luis de Victoria, Palestrina is considered the leading ...
, François Couperin, Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith
Paul Hindemith (; 16 November 189528 December 1963) was a German composer, music theorist, teacher, violist and conductor. He founded the Amar Quartet in 1921, touring extensively in Europe. As a composer, he became a major advocate of the ' ...
, Elisabeth Lutyens
Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens, CBE (9 July 190614 April 1983) was an English composer.
Early life and education
Elisabeth Lutyens was born in London on 9 July 1906. She was one of the five children of Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), a me ...
and Elizabeth Maconchy
Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanu (; 19 March 1907 – 11 November 1994) was an Irish-English composer. She is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced.
Biography
Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was b ...
.
Wyss encouraged British composers to set French texts for her to perform.[ The most famous work that resulted from this was Britten's '']Les Illuminations
''Illuminations'' is an incomplete suite of prose poems by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, first published partially in ', a Paris literary review, in May–June 1886. The texts were reprinted in book form in October 1886 by Les publications de L ...
'' to words by Rimbaud
Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud (, ; 20 October 1854 – 10 November 1891) was a French poet known for his transgressive and surreal themes and for his influence on modern literature and arts, prefiguring surrealism. Born in Charleville, he start ...
, which Wyss premiered in London in 1940 with Boyd Neel
Louis Boyd Neel O.C. (19 July 190530 September 1981) was an English, and later Canadian conductor and academic. He was Dean of the Royal Conservatory of Music at the University of Toronto. Neel founded and conducted chamber orchestras, and cont ...
and his orchestra. Wyss was equally at home with English texts, such as those in Britten's '' Our Hunting Fathers'' (1936)[ and ''On This Island'' (1937). Britten dedicated Vol. 2 of his Folk Song Arrangements (1942) to Wyss and Gyde's two sons, Arnold and Humphrey. Britten was also Humphrey's godfather. She gave the first performance of his 8 French Folksongs, in a 1942 National Gallery recital with ]Gerald Moore
Gerald Moore CBE (30 July 1899 – 13 March 1987) was an English classical pianist best known for his career as a collaborative pianist for many distinguished musicians. Among those with whom he was closely associated were Dietrich Fischer-Di ...
, and she and Britten later recorded five of these songs. However, by 1942, Britten's knowledge of voice and vocal technique had greatly increased, and he preferred Peter Pears
Sir Peter Neville Luard Pears ( ; 22 June 19103 April 1986) was an English tenor. His career was closely associated with the composer Benjamin Britten, his personal and professional partner for nearly forty years.
Pears' musical career starte ...
's interpretation of ''Les Illuminations'' to Wyss's performance, which he described to a close friend as "hopelessly inefficient, subjective & (of all things) so coy & whimsey!!!" Though Wyss was keen to resume her professional relationship with Britten, he was no longer interested but confessed to Pears that he was "too fond of her to be rude, & not interested enough to be critical".
As a near neighbour of Gerald Finzi
Gerald Raphael Finzi (14 July 1901 – 27 September 1956) was a British composer. Finzi is best known as a choral composer, but also wrote in other genres. Large-scale compositions by Finzi include the cantata '' Dies natalis'' for solo voice and ...
's, from 1941 Wyss performed in several of his concerts involving the Newbury String Players, singing the Aria from Finzi's '' Dies Natalis'' as well as works by William Byrd
William Byrd (; 4 July 1623) was an English composer of late Renaissance music. Considered among the greatest composers of the Renaissance, he had a profound influence on composers both from his native England and those on the continent. He ...
, Henry Purcell, George Frideric Handel, Ivor Gurney
Ivor Bertie Gurney (28 August 1890 – 26 December 1937) was an English poet and composer, particularly of songs. He was born and raised in Gloucester. He suffered from bipolar disorder through much of his life and spent his last 15 years in ps ...
, and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Wyss gave many first performances of works in French or English by composers including Lennox Berkeley
Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley (12 May 190326 December 1989) was an English composer.
Biography
Berkeley was born on 12 May 1903 in Oxford, England, the younger child and only son of Aline Carla (1863–1935), daughter of Sir James Char ...
, Arnold Cooke
Arnold Atkinson Cooke (4 November 1906 – 13 August 2005) was a British composer.Biography by Eric Wetherell, British Music Society/ref>
Education
Cooke was born at Gomersal, West Yorkshire, into a family of carpet manufacturers. As a child, ...
, Roberto Gerhard
Robert Gerhard i Ottenwaelder (; 25 September 1896 – 5 January 1970) was a Spanish Catalan composer and musical scholar and writer, generally known outside Catalonia as Roberto Gerhard.Malcolm MacDonald. 'Gerhard, Roberto' in ''Grove Music Onl ...
, Elizabeth Maconchy
Dame Elizabeth Violet Maconchy LeFanu (; 19 March 1907 – 11 November 1994) was an Irish-English composer. She is considered to be one of the finest composers Great Britain and Ireland have produced.
Biography
Elizabeth Violet Maconchy was b ...
, Peter Racine Fricker
Peter Racine Fricker (5 September 19201 February 1990) was an English composer, among the first to establish his career entirely after the Second World War. He lived in the US for the last thirty years of his life. Fricker wrote over 160 works in ...
, Alan Rawsthorne, George Enescu
George Enescu (; – 4 May 1955), known in France as Georges Enesco, was a Romanian composer, violinist, conductor and teacher. Regarded as one of the greatest musicians in Romanian history, Enescu is featured on the Romanian five lei.
Biogr ...
, Antony Hopkins
Antony Hopkins CBE (21 March 1921 – 6 May 2014) was a composer, pianist, and conductor, as well as a writer and radio broadcaster. He was widely known for his books of musical analysis and for his radio programmes ''Talking About Music'', b ...
and Mátyás Seiber
Mátyás György Seiber (; 4 May 190524 September 1960) was a Hungarian-born British composer who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1935 onwards. His work linked many diverse musical influences, from the Hungarian tradition of Bartó ...
.[ She was also a leading exponent in the UK of songs by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, ]Reynaldo Hahn
Reynaldo Hahn (; 9 August 1874 – 28 January 1947) was a Venezuelan-born French composer, conductor, music critic, and singer. He is best known for his songs – '' mélodies'' – of which he wrote more than 100.
Hahn was born in Caracas ...
, Maurice Ravel and other French composers.[ During a career that lasted until the early 1960s Wyss broadcast extensively for the ]BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
, and made concert tours in continental Europe and Australia.