 She was noted for her performances of French works, many of them new to Britain, for giving the world premieres of Benjamin Britten's orchestral song cycles "Our Hunting Fathers" (1936) and "Les Illuminations" (1940), and for encouraging other composers to set English and French texts.Among those who wrote for her were Lennox Berkeley, Arnold Cooke, Roberto Gerhard, Elizabeth Maconchy, Peter Racine Fricker, Alan Rawsthorne and Mátyás Seiber.Wyss was born to a musical family in La Neuveville, Canton of Bern, Switzerland.