Gender Wars in Music, or Bloomsbury and French Composers

This chapter explores Woolf’s relationships with two important French women composers: Germaine Tailleferre and Nadia Boulanger. The former is singled out by Woolf in A Room of One’s Own as emblematic of the professional bias facing women composers. Boulanger and Woolf met in 1936, at a lunch with Ethel Smyth and Winaretta Singer (Princesse Edmond de Polignac). As her correspondence confirms, Boulanger and Woolf stayed in touch for some years and Woolf repeatedly referred to Boulanger’s example when reflecting on the misogyny and obstacles facing contemporary women artists, whether composers, painters or writers. Consideration of Woolf’s relationships with these women is placed in the larger context of their reception in the French and British press, exploring the role that their gender played in the critical reception of their work and aesthetic innovations.