Germaine Tailleferre was the only female member of Les Six, that loose collective of composers that rose to prominence in Paris in the late Nineteen-Teens and ‘20s, under the guidance of Jean Cocteau. Her famous colleagues included Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger, and Georges Auric. Louis Durey, a hard-line communist who went on to set poems by Ho-Chi Minh and Mao Zedong, is the one nobody remembers. (I wonder why.)
Tailleferre was strong-willed from the start. Her birth name was Taillefesse, but she changed it to spite her father, since the old man opposed her musical studies. However, she took piano lessons with her mother and was admitted into the Paris Conservatory. It was there that she met the rest of The Six and that the prizes began to pile up. She also earned the friendship and received the support of Maurice Ravel.
In 1925, she married Ralph Barton, the American caricaturist, and moved to New York. Two years later, the couple returned to France, then divorced. Her career thrived in the 1920s and ‘30s. With the outbreak of World War II, however, she beat it back to the United States, leaving most of her scores at her home in Grasse, and passed the war years in Philadelphia. (Please, if anyone knows anything about her Philadelphia years, message me!)
After the war, she again returned to France, where she resumed her career. As she got older, her pieces tended to be shorter, as she suffered from arthritis. She also wrote a lot for children and young pianists. She composed virtually right up until the time of her death in 1983, when she was 91 years-old. She wrote so much, in fact, that a lot of the music of her later years has never been published, and fresh discoveries from her output are being recorded all the time.
Here’s an interesting write-up about Tailleferre and her relationship with Barton. The quote that headlines the piece is not by Tailleferre, but by Germaine Greer!
Furthermore, I love that the video at the bottom of the page, of the composer’s “Six chansons françaises,” is age-restricted due to the fact that it’s illustrated with the painting of a nude. Mon Dieu!
Happy birthday, Germaine Tailleferre!
The Concertino for Harp and Orchestra (1927):
The lovely and wistful “Arabesque” for clarinet and piano (1972):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0E8tUzQezA See Less
The Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1924). The piece was given its U.S. premiere – in the presence of the composer – by Alfred Cortot and the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted Leopold Stokowski.
“Rêverie” (1964)
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