Pierre-Octave Ferroud

Pierre-Octave Calixte Ferroud (6 January 1900 – 17 August 1936) was a French composer of classical music.

Life
Ferroud was born in Chasselay, Rhône, near Lyon. He went to Lyon, to Strasbourg (for military service from 1920-2) where he studied with Guy Ropartz, and again to Lyon where he was for a time an associate and "disciple" of Florent Schmitt, and a pupil of Georges Martin Witkowski. He then travelled to Paris in 1923, settling as a composer and music critic. In 1932, together with Henry Barraud, Jean Rivier and Emmanuel Bondeville, he founded Triton, a contemporary music society.

In a letter to Boris Asafiev, Sergei Prokofiev described his encounter with Ferroud, praised the Symphony in A and suggested that Asafiev might have a look at it. Ferroud's opera, he reported, impressed him much less.

He wrote a biographical work about his mentor Florent Schmitt (whom he was, nevertheless, to pre-decease - Schmitt died 31 years after Autour de Florent Schmitt was published, in 1958.)

Ferroud was a regular contributor of musical reviews and essays to the journal Paris-Soir.

He died in 1936, when he was decapitated in a road accident in Debrecen, in Hungary. On hearing of Ferroud's death, Francis Poulenc wrote to Georges Auric of his distress.

Selected compositions

 * Andante cordial (1919/26)
 * Types (Vieux Beau - Bourgeoise de qualité - Businessman)(1922-1924) (recorded by Emmanuel Krivine and the Orchestre National de Lyon)
 * Foules (1922-1924) (recorded by Krivine)
 * Sérénade (piano and orchestra) (1927)
 * Chirugie 1927 (opéra comique)
 * Jeunesse (1929-1933) (ballet in two scenes)
 * Chansons de Fous
 * Sonnerie pour le Hérault (1935)
 * Le Porcher (1924) (ballet)
 * March for L'éventail de Jeanne (collaborative work by Auric, Ferroud and others) (1927) (ballet)
 * Monte-Carlo (1928)
 * Sérénade pour orchestre (1927) (Berceuse; Pavane; Spiritual)
 * Symphonie en la (1930) in three movements (recorded by Krivine)
 * Chirurgie vers. orchestrale (1930) (recorded by Krivine)
 * Trois pièces pour flûte seule (1920-1921)
 * Spiritual (guitar) (1926)
 * Sonate pour violon et piano (1929)
 * Sonate pour violoncelle et piano (1930)
 * Trio à vent en mi (1933)
 * Quatuor à cordes (1932-1936)
 * Sarabande (1920/1926)
 * Au parc Monceau (1921-1925)
 * Sarabande pour piano (1920)
 * Sarabande pour orchestre (1920-1926)
 * Sonatine en ut dièse (in C♯) (1928)
 * Fables (1931)
 * A contre-cœur (1922-1925)
 * Cinq poèmes de P.J. Toulet (1927)
 * Cinq poèmes de P. Valéry (1929)
 * Trois chansons de J. Supervielle (1932)
 * Trois poèmes intimes de Goethe (1932)