Pierre-Octave Ferroud

Pierre-Octave Calixte Ferroud was a French composer of classical music.

Life

Ferroud was born in Chasselay, Rhône, near Lyon. He went to Lyon, to Strasbourg 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
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.