Germaine Tailleferre was born in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés in 1892. Her mother began teaching her piano, but her father opposed her entering the Conservatory. She attended in secret, until her first award for solfège softened his stance. In 1914, she won a first prize for counterpoint. During her studies, she met Arthur Honegger, Darius Milhaud, and Georges Auric, who became members of the Groupe des Six in the early 1920s alongside herself, Francis Poulenc, and Louis Durey. She also associated with a number of poets and painters. In 1918, she and Erik Satie performed her Jeux de plein air (1917) for two pianos. Her Première Sonate (1920-1921) for violin and piano was performed in 1922 by Jacques Thibaud and Alfred Cortot. Her ballet Le Marchand d’oiseaux (1923) was performed by the Ballets Suédois. In 1924, Alfred Cortot gave the first public performance of her Premier Concerto (1923) – a commission from Princess de Polignac – in London, performing it again in Boston in 1925. Those were the impressive beginnings of a career which would continue until her death in 1983: nearly two hundred works across every musical genre, with a particular focus on concertante pieces and operas. She was among the rare women composers to be performed at the Théâtre de l’Opéra-Comique, with her ballet Paris-Magie in 1949 and her opéra comique Il était un petit navire in 1951. She also wrote for theatre, film, television, and radio. Her music is marked by French post-impressionism, but with some incursions into serialism in the 1950s. An artist of some modesty, she rather doubted her own talent, and wrote: “I make music because it amuses me, but it isn’t great music and I know it.” Her unhappy marriages, first to cartoonist Ralph Barton from 1925 and 1931 and then to lawyer Jean Lageat from 1932 to 1955, hobbled her creativity. She had a daughter from her second marriage, Françoise, and has a granddaughter, Elvire de Rudder.

– Florence Launay –

[Traduction en anglais : Raphaël Meyer]