Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983)
Sonata For Violin & Piano in C-Sharp Minor (c-1922)
Chamber Works by Women Composers
Vox Box Recording
Trio For Piano, Violin & Cello, Op. 150
1st movement: Moderato san lenteur
2nd movement: Scherzo
3rd & 4th movement: Assez lent; IV - Tres vite
The [Tailleferre] sonata with its Milhaud-like simplicity of melodic line is a much more sincere piece of music than it has been credited with being. It is difficult to shake the feeling that had Milhaud’s name appeared on it this sonata would be one of the popular works of the century. “” Joseph Roche, notes from the recordings
There’s a necessary bit of having the cake you’re eating when it comes to the argument that the classical canon is missing a significant dimension of the human experience because of its systematic exclusion of female composers. For in one breath we’re saying that you can't distinguish between a male and female composer just by hearing their work—it is this characteristic anonymity of the orchestral composer that Roche unwittingly indicates in the quote above—that the orchestra is a buffer between the demographic of the composer and the prejudices of the audience should have resulted in significantly more parity between the genders in the genre. Yet we have to say with another breath that a great deal is missing in the canon, because male and female brains are generally different etc, so the canon would sound very different had the contribution of both genders been equally regarded.
Germaine Tailleferre
If the concept of blind-auditions for a performer is relatively harmless, shouldn’t the same hold true for female composers who should have been shielded by the scrim of the orchestra performing their work? Thus the argument for anonymity is valid. So too is the argument that the opposite is also true, that a composer should have been canonized because she’s a woman and a canon without equal representation of genders is hardly a canon. This seemingly contradictory duality is true wherever demographics and representation is a question, so for the sake of diversity we have to be able to say two things at once: they should have been included because they’re just like everyone else, and they must be included now because they bring something different.
And just how much of this anonymity is really just uniformity? Hence the age-old trope that ‘all classical music sounds the same. And just how uniform would this sound be had a more liberal approach been taken in regards to who gets access to the theoretical end of Western music theory. And if it’s obvious that the canon is history and therefore unchangeable, then it stands against reason that contemporary performances continue to be bound by some unspoken law to perpetuate this history of exclusion in their programming—why not an ounce of Lili Boulanger for every ounce or so of Franz Schubert. Do we instinctively shrink away from that parity only because we’ve been fed much more of one at the exorbitant expense of the other?
It’s also remarkable how cluelessly music writers approach this wall-to-wall red flag of the classical cannon’s all-male problem—usually with some high-brow, though really pusilanimous reverence for the canon. Take for example the quote above, which blatantly admits that had Tailleferre’s name been replaced with man’s name, the freshly animated and expressive character of this sonata would have enjoyed a much wider audience.
Admitting as much, without making any effort to change, can no longer pass for activism. This is what I meant recently in regards to the uselessness of education without the courage to act what we’ve learned.
The question of value, being valued—and the interaction between value and pedigree—in the performing arts, remains top of my mind. For in the same way that a woman’s work is devalued because her name is attached to it, so too is the work produced by BIPOC artists devalued precisely because their attached name does not hint at some stuffy and exclusive pedigree…
Though replete with a number of particularly whistleable themes, this recording of the Tailleferre sonata was nevertheless outshined by the appendage of another female French composer—Lili Boulanger’s ‘Cortège’:
Throwback to: YR3, WEEK25 — YR2, WEEK25
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