ABSTRACT
Renowned as being the only female member of Les Six, Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) is perhaps the most well-known French woman composer of the interwar years. Although many have questioned the appropriateness of the label ‘Les Six’,1 Tailleferre’s inclusion within Henri Collet’s grouping was extremely beneficial for both her early career, and her subsequent reception. Tailleferre’s connection with Les Six facilitated her early career by bringing her critical recognition and plentiful opportunities for commissions, performances of her works, and publications. Her situation within Les Six, a group which was often perceived as having avant-garde leanings, also granted her access into many of the most influential artistic circles within contemporary Paris, thereby providing her with ample networking opportunities to forge important contacts and make her work more widely known. The success of her early association with Les Six, and the accompanying flurry of compositional activity, was interrupted in 1925 by her short marriage to Ralph Barton. Unfortunately, this unhappy nuptial experience (which ended in 1929) was followed by a second ill-fated marriage to Jean Lageat in 1931.2 As discussed in chapter 1, Tailleferre’s husbands treated her with cruelty. Both were unfaithful, and Lageat was also physically abusive. Barton and Lageat both actively attempted to stop her composing, and her marriages, therefore, represent effective disruptions to her career. Tailleferre’s marriages exemplify the negative consequences that contemporary pressures on interwar women to conform to the norms of patriarchal society could have (as discussed in detail in chapter 1). Thus she functions as an effective case study of both the opportunities and the restrictions which impacted upon the careers of female composers working in interwar France.
