Germaine Tailleferre
Born: April 19, 1892, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France
Died: November 7, 1983, Paris, France
BIOGRAPHY MUSIC RECORDINGS SOURCES
Germaine Tailleferre, famously one of the members of “Les Six,” was born outside of Paris and began her musical studies at an early age studying piano with her mother and composing an opera at 8-years-old. By the age of 12 she was studying at the Paris Conservatory, where she was a piano prodigy and won prizes in counterpoint and harmony. At the conservatory, she met Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger for the first time and later became friends with Maurice Ravel.
Disapproving of her musical studies, Tailleferre’s father sent her away to a Catholic school and by the time she was 14 he disowned her and she was forced to support herself by teaching private music lessons. Tailleferre’s circle of friends expanded to include composers and intellectuals including Erik Satie, who heard her play her composition for 2 pianos and declared her his “musical daughter.” Tailleferre officially became a member of Les Six with Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey, in 1920.
Tailleferre composed all her life, writing 178 works for piano, music for chamber orchestra, ballet, and vocal music, which helped her support herself after two unsuccessful marriages. Her unique style employed bitonality, jazz, and cabaret rhythms in her musical writing. She also wrote incidental music for theater and radio and was a skilled film music composer.
In the 1950s, Tailleferre received a commission to write “pocket operas” for the popular medium of radio broadcasting. Working with librettist Denise Centore (her niece), Tailleferre composed four short opera bouffes that would imitate other composers’ styles using the “pastiche” principle. These pieces were broadcast on December 28, 1955 and, in recent years, have been adapted for the stage. They were written for voices and chamber orchestra but are also available in a piano reduction score.
Later in her career, Tailleferre worked as an accompanist for a children’s music class at École alsacienne, a private school, while also writing smaller musical forms because of arthritis in her hands. Her final famous work, the Concerto de la fidelité for coloratura soprano and orchestra, was performed at the Paris Opera the year before she died. She continued writing until a few weeks before her death in November 1983.