Odette Gartenlaub was born in 1922 in Paris, the eldest daughter of Polly and Jacques Gartenlaub, who both came from Eastern European Jewish families. She was introduced to music through the repertoire of the Gaîté-Lyrique, of which her mother was fond. After hearing her sing, a client of her father’s (who was a watchmaker and jeweller) suggested she study at the Paris Conservatory, where she became a student of Marguerite Long and won first prize for piano at age fourteen. She then studied under Yves Nat. Wishing to become a composer (an interest of hers since she was nine), she studied harmony under André Bloch and Olivier Messiaen until her expulsion from the Conservatory in 1942 due to the laws of the Vichy government. She took private instruction from Noël Gallon, whom she then rejoined at the Conservatory after the Liberation, then studied composition under Henri Büsser and Darius Milhaud, and won the Grand Prix de Rome in 1948. After her stay in Rome, she continued adding to her body of work until her retirement in 2008, composing nearly a hundred and fifty works in total. Ever critical of her own talent, she only kept a handful of pieces from her Roman period, including Divertissement (1952, later Sextet) for winds and percussion, which marked the start of her preference for wind instruments. In the following years, she wrote three of her major works: her Concerto for flute and orchestra in 1955 (a commission of the State), her second Concerto for piano and orchestra in 1957 (performed in 1958 under the direction of Désiré Inghelbreht), and Espace Sonore pour petit orchestre et deux voix en vocalises in 1959 – a commission from the RTF which exemplifies the maturity her unique musical language. In 1959, she also married composer Bernard Haultier, who would always be a staunch supporter of her work. Their daughter, Pascale, was born in 1963.
Odette Gartenlaub also leaves behind several pedagogical works and numerous teaching manuals, testaments to her novel ideas and influence in the field from 1976 on.

– Florence Launay and Jean-Michel Ferran, author of Odette Gartenlaub, Les vies multiples d’une musicienne du XXe siècle (Paris, Aedam Musicae, 2017) –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]