Pierre-Octave Ferroud

Pierre-Octave Ferroud (6 January 1900 – 17 August 1936)[1] was a French composer of classical music.

He 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,[2] and again to Lyon where he was for a time an associate and "disciple" of Florent Schmitt, and a pupil of Georges Martin Witkowski.[3] He then travelled to Paris in 1923, where he later founded with Henry Barraud, Jean Rivier and Emmanuel Bondeville Triton, a contemporary music society (in 1932).[4]

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.[5]

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.[6]