Germaine Tailleferre

Germaine Tailleferre (French: [tɑjfɛʁ]; 19 April 1892 – 7 November 1983) was a French composer and the only female member of the group of composers known as Les Six.

She was born Marcelle Taillefesse at Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Val-de-Marne, France, but as a young woman she changed her last name to "Tailleferre" to spite her father, who had refused to support her musical studies. She studied piano with her mother at home, composing short works of her own, after which she began studying at the Paris Conservatory where she met Louis Durey, Francis Poulenc, Darius Milhaud, Georges Auric, and Arthur Honegger. At the Paris Conservatory her skills were rewarded with prizes in several categories. Most notably Tailleferre wrote 18 short works in the Petit livre de harpe de Madame Tardieu for Caroline Tardieu, the Conservatory’s Assistant Professor of Harp.

With her new friends, she soon was associating with the artistic crowd in the Paris districts of Montmartre and Montparnasse, including the sculptor Emmanuel Centore who later married her sister Jeanne. It was in the Montparnasse atelier of one of her painter friends where the initial idea for Les Six began. The publication of Jean Cocteau's manifesto Le coq et l'Arlequin resulted in Henri Collet's media articles that led to instant fame for the group, of which Tailleferre was the only female member.

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