Le Mal Du Suisse | Katelyn Cox in Recital

Katelyn Cox is joined by pianist Jason Carlson for her Master's Recital at Northwestern University. "This recital is entitled “Le Mal du Suisse,” which is a term dating all the way back to the 17th century, coined to describe Swiss mercenaries in France who became extremely homesick while away for work. This malady is deeply familiar to me, as I often feel it, and my grandmother seems to have felt it as well. After WWII, my fraternal Grandmother’s family immigrated from Switzerland to Canada, then to a small town in Idaho a few years later. Growing up, we visited my grandparents in Idaho many times, and my memories of my grandmother are full of little Swiss house models and cowbells, and her reminiscing on her childhood. My maternal grandparents also instilled a deep love for nature and Switzerland in me, as I fell in-love with a copy of “Heidi” passed to me through my mother from my grandfather, and spent lots of time with my grandmother in her garden every spring and summer as a small child. My heritage is largely Swiss and German, and in 2016 I was lucky enough to get to visit Switzerland, seeing where my grandmother was from and falling in-love with the nature there. It’s not at-all hard to see why so many poets, authors, and composers were infatuated with Switzerland’s beauty, inspiring works that are still widely popular today. This recital offers some of the works by artists who found their muse in Switzerland’s nature. Rossini never visited himself, but was inspired by the folk tale of William Tell and paintings he had seen to write his classic opera. Karl Eckert was also inspired by folk culture in writing his “Echolied,” in which he attempts to mimick yodeling using soprano coloratura writing. Werner Weherli was himself from northern Switzerland, and wrote his song cycle “Im Bluescht” (In Bloom) based on the book of poetry by the same name by local poet Sophie Haemmerli-Marti during his time as a composition student in Basel. And Richard Strauss fled to Switzerland after WW2, spending the rest of his life there. His final work was “Four Last Songs,” having been inspired not only by the beauty around him, but by Swiss poet Herman Hesse’s poetry and his own impending death."