As I continue to learn more about the music of the 20th century, I am especially drawn to composers who I am unfamiliar with, and Germaine Tailleferre is one of them. I had never heard her name before this semester, and suddenly I learn that she was a member of “Les Six”!
I have noticed that sometimes when we learn about women composers, we read articles about them or critiques of their music, but we do not always read the composer’s own writing. I decided to go on an internet hunt to see if I could learn more about this elusive composer. Specifically, I wanted to find writing or interviews from the composer herself.
I started with Grove Online to familiarize myself with Tailleferre’s bio. The Grove entry mentions her early promise as a musician, the disapproval she experienced both from her father and from her two husbands, her inclusion in “Les Six,” and her Neo-Classical style. What caught my eye in particular was this statement: “Unfortunately, Tailleferre never regained the acclaim she had enjoyed through her early associations with Les Six. Two unhappy marriages…proved a considerable drain on her creative energies.” The article goes on to list her accomplishments later in life, which to me seemed impressive considering that she was married twice to a husband who discouraged her from composing. These accomplishment stood in contrast to Grove’s previous statement about her lost acclaim. You can read the full article here: https://www-oxfordmusiconline-com.ezproxy3.library.arizona.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000027390?rskey=i2Yiyn&result=1)
I looked through Grove’s list of her compositions, and the dates provide a broad range of time in which she was active. She wrote 12 opera buffes, 4 ballets, a host of television and film scores, various pieces for orchestra and wind band, choral works, chamber and instrumental music, and 30 works for solo piano. I wondered why the Grove entry focused so much on Tailleferre’s dry spell in composing, when in reality she continued to compose and teach until she was 91 years old!
I continued my research and started to dig through the London Times digital archives. That was when I found a startling but brief article concerning her first husband, Ralph Barton:
I was shocked that Tailleferre’s first husband was violently killed! Perhaps that explains the dry spell which the Grove entry mentioned during this time. As a newly widowed woman in 1931, I imagine she must have needed to take some time to recover and find financial footing for herself. The Grove article is negative about the reality of Tailleferre composing by commission, but it does not seem like she really had any other options.
At this point, I still had not had any luck finding primary sources from Tailleferre herself. Then I discovered a gem of a New York Times article from 1982 that includes an interview with the composer: https://www.nytimes.com/1982/05/23/arts/one-of-les-six-still-at-work.html.
I will return to this interview for my next post, as there is a lot to discuss from it. I am going to have to do some more digging as well and begin studying Tailleferre’s music. I hope to also find more primary sources to hear her own voice and what her philosophy was concerning composition. As I said at the beginning of this post, we often hear secondhand accounts or judgments of composers, but what is most enlightening is hearing from the composer herself.
