Germaine Tailleferre

Germaine Tailleferre was a French composer who was the only woman among Les Six, the group of French composers gathered around Erik Satie and Jean Cocteau in Paris after the First World War. She was born Marcelle Germaine Taillefesse on April 19, 1892, in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, near Paris. She entered the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 12, against the wishes of her father, and changed the spelling of her surname to Tailleferre as an adult to mark the breach.

She studied at the Conservatoire under Henri Dallier, Georges Caussade and Charles-Marie Widor, taking premiers prix in harmony, counterpoint and accompaniment. She formed friendships at the Conservatoire with Darius Milhaud, Arthur Honegger and Francis Poulenc, and through them with Satie, who in 1917 introduced her to the group that the critic Henri Collet christened Les Six in January 1920. She was the only woman in the group; her colleagues were Milhaud, Honegger, Poulenc, Georges Auric and Louis Durey.

Her catalog includes the ballet Le Marchand d'oiseaux (1923), commissioned by the Ballets Suédois, the Concertino for Harp and Orchestra (1927), the Piano Concerto No. 1 (1923), the comic opera Il Était un Petit Navire (1951) and a long series of chamber and vocal works. She wrote film scores from the 1930s onward and contributed extensively to French radio music after the Second World War.

She lived briefly in the United States during the 1940s and returned to France after the war. She continued to compose into her 90s and was made a Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1973. She died in Paris on November 7, 1983, at the age of 91.

Her name Germaine is the French feminine form of Germain, from the Latin Germanus, originally an ethnic name meaning "German" or, in the broader Latin sense, "genuine, of the same parents." It is a feminine name borne in France particularly in honor of Saint Germaine of Pibrac.