Tailleferre, Germaine (EN)

Tailleferre Germaine, actually Germaine Marcelle Taillefesse, *19 April 1892 Parc-St-Maur (near Paris), †7 November 1983 Paris, French composer. In 1904, she entered the Paris Conservatory (piano class of E. Sautereau-Meyer). During her studies, she won many first prizes: in piano and solfège (1906), then in harmony (1913), counterpoint (1914) and fugue (1915). In 1913, in G. Caussade’s counterpoint class, she met D. Milhaud, A. Honegger and G. Auric, whom she defeated in the competition for the gold medal. In 1917, at the urging of E. Satie, who was delighted with her composition Jeux de plein air, she joined the Nouveaux Jeunes association, which became the nucleus of the Group of Six; in addition to Tailleferre, it included G. Auric, L. Durey, A. Honegger, D. Milhaud and F. Poulenc. The formation aimed to promote a new art – one that would break away from the romantic tradition, one that was simple, clear and related to popular and entertainment music. Due to differences in the personalities of the composers who were part of the Group, it ceased to exist in the mid-1920s. The young composer’s career was supported by the Duchess de Polignac, who commissioned her to write her Piano Concerto No. 1. In the 1920s, Tailleferre was friends with M. Ravel, who had a significant influence on her work. She spent the period of the German occupation in the United States. After returning to France in 1946, she devoted herself mainly to stage work; in 1955, she created a series of four comic operas, Du style galant au style méchant, composed for Radio France. In the 1960s, struggling with financial problems, she wrote mainly film music. In 1970, she became a professor at the Schola Cantorum in Paris but soon resigned from this position due to a lack of students. She remained active as a composer until the end of her life; she wrote her last major work (Concerto de la fidélité) when she was 89 years old.

Tailleferre’s work falls within the neoclassical movement of 20^th-century French music. Her compositional style was formed in the early 1920s under the strong influence of Stravinsky, as well as Ravel and Fauré. It is characterised by clarity of form, transparency of texture, and a tendency towards parody and pastiche. A frequent source of inspiration for the composer was old French culture, including the work of harpsichordists (Piano Concerto No. 1), poetry (6 chansons françaises) and the folklore of various regions of the country (Chansons du folklore de France). The greatest recognition was gained by works from the period of Tailleferre’s activity in the Group of Six, as well as some works from the 1930s, primarily the Overture to the opera Zoulain (Tailleferre’s most frequently performed composition) and La cantate du Narcisse. After the war, Tailleferre composed mainly on commission, which resulted in a very uneven level and stylistic incoherence of her work at the time; in the mid-1950s, she experimented with the serial technique (Sonata for Clarinet). Tailleferre’s music is full of borrowings from other composers and self-quotations.

Literature: J. Roy Le Groupe des Six, Paris 1994; R. Shapiro, Germaine Tailleferre. A Bio-bibliography, Westport [Greenwood Press] 2004.