Pierre Petit (21 April 1922 – 1 July 2000) was a French composer.

Life

Petit was born in

Poitiers Poitiers is a city on the river Clain in west-central France. It is a commune in France, commune, the capital of the Vienne (department), Vienne department and the historical center of Poitou, Poitou Province. In 2021, it had a population of 9 ...

, the son of a professor of the khâgne. He studied literature and music in Paris ( Hattemer Course,

Lycée Louis-le-Grand The Lycée Louis-le-Grand (), also referred to simply as Louis-le-Grand or by its acronym LLG, is a public Lycée (French secondary school, also known as sixth form college) located on Rue Saint-Jacques (Paris), rue Saint-Jacques in central Par ...

) and literature at the Sorbonne. He studied at the

Paris Conservatoire The Conservatoire de Paris (), or the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (; CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue Jean Ja ...

from 1942, his teachers included Georges Dandelot for music analysis,

Nadia Boulanger Juliette Nadia Boulanger (; 16 September 188722 October 1979) was a French music teacher, conductor and composer. She taught many of the leading composers and musicians of the 20th century, and also performed occasionally as a pianist and organis ...

for harmony,

Noël Gallon Noël Jean-Charles André Gallon (; 11 September 1891 – 26 December 1966) was a French composer and music educator. His compositional output includes several choral works and vocal art songs, 10 preludes, a ''Toccata'' for piano, a ''Sona ...

for

counterpoint In music theory, counterpoint is the relationship of two or more simultaneous musical lines (also called voices) that are harmonically dependent on each other, yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. The term originates from the Latin ...

and

fugue In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...

, and Henri Busser for composition. In 1946, he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome with the lyrical scene ''Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard'', which was performed in the same year by the orchestra of the ''Cadets du Conservatoire'' under the direction of

Claude Delvincourt Claude Étienne Edmond Marie Pierre Delvincourt (12 January 1888 – 5 April 1954) was a French pianist and composer of classical music. Biography Delvincourt was born in Paris, the son of Pierre Delvincourt and Marguerite Fourès. He studied ...

. From 1951 Petit taught the history of civilization at the Conservatoire de Paris and the

École polytechnique (, ; also known as Polytechnique or l'X ) is a ''grande école'' located in Palaiseau, France. It specializes in science and engineering and is a founding member of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris. The school was founded in 1794 by mat ...

. In 1960, he began working for the

Office de Radiodiffusion Télévision Française The (; ORTF; , or French Radio and Television Broadcasting Office) was the national agency charged, between 1964 and 1975, with providing public radio and television in France. All programming, especially news broadcasts, were under strict cont ...

. At first he was head of light music, and then from 1965 he was musical director. Among others, he produced music for ''accords parfaits'', ''contre-ut'', ''Presto'', ''Figaro ci figaro là''. In 1963, he was appointed director of the

École normale de musique de Paris The École Normale de Musique de Paris "Alfred Cortot" (ENMP) is a leading conservatoire located in the 17th arrondissement of Paris. The school was founded in 1919 by Auguste Mangeot and Alfred Cortot. The term ''école normale'' (English: no ...

, succeeding

Alfred Cortot Alfred Denis Cortot ( , ; 26 September 187715 June 1962) was a French pianist, conductor, and teacher who was one of the most renowned classical musicians of the 20th century. A pianist of massive repertory, he was especially valued for his po ...

and working alongside such musicians as

, Georges Dandelot,

Alfred Desenclos Alfred Desenclos (7 February 1912 – 3 March 1971) was a French composer of (modern) classical music. Desenclos was a self-described "romantic" whose music is highly expressive and atmospheric and rooted in rigorous compositional technique. To s ...

Norbert Dufourcq Norbert Stéphane Jean-Marie Dufourcq (21 September 1904 – 19 December 1990) was a French organist, music educator, musicologist and musicographer. Biography Norbert Dufourcq was born in 1904 in Saint-Jean-de-Braye in the Loiret department ...

and Marguerite Roesgen-Champion. He held the position for 35 years, when he was succeeded by Henri Heugel. His students included Roger Bellon. He was also on the jury of the Long-Thibaud-Crespin Competition.

Output and awards

Petit composed operas, operettas and ballets, orchestral works, concertos, chamber music and songs. He was also noted as a music writer, writing books on

Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi ( ; ; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto, a small town in the province of Parma, to a family of moderate means, recei ...

Ravel Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism in music, Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composer ...

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

, and a study of the musical problems of

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

. He was also a music critic for ''

Le Figaro () is a French daily morning newspaper founded in 1826. It was named after Figaro, a character in several plays by polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, Beaumarchais (1732–1799): ''Le Barbier de Séville'', ''The Guilty Mother, La Mère coupable'', ...

''. For his musical work, in 1965 he was awarded the Grand Prix du Conseil Général de la Seine, and in 1985, the Grand Music Prize of

SACEM The Society of Authors, Composers and Publishers of Music or SACEM () is a French professional association collecting payments of artists’ rights and distributing the rights to the original songwriters, composers, and music publisher A mus ...

Personal life

He married the singer Christiane Castelli, famous for her interpretation of

Tosca ''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1 ...

at the

Opéra de Paris The Paris Opera ( ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be kn ...

. They had three children, Claude (journalist and writer), Didier (singer, songwriter and performer under the name Romain Didier) and Marie-Laurène. Later he married the violinist Marie-Claude Theuveny in 1958, and had two children with her, Carolin Petit, composer and arranger of music for film and television, and Nicolas. Finally, in 1974 he married his third wife Liliane Fiaux.

Works

Compositions

* ''Mélodie'' for voice and piano, 1941 * ''6 Petites pièces à 4 mains'', piano pieces for children, 1942 * ''Concertino pour piano'', 1942 * ''Suite'' für vier Celli, 1942 * ''Bois de Boulogne'', five pieces for piano, 1946 * ''La Maréchale Sans-Gêne'', operetta, 1948 * ''Zadig'', ballet, 1948 * ''Deux mélodies sur des poèmes de Charles Oulmont'', 1949 * ''Romanza romana'', 1950 * ''Ciné-Bijou'', ballet after jazz themes, composed for

Roland Petit Roland Petit (13 January 192410 July 2011) was a French ballet company director, choreographer and dancer. He trained at the Paris Opera Ballet school, and became well known for his creative ballets. Life and work The son of shoe designer Ro ...

, 1952 * ''Feu rouge, feu vert'', ballet, 1953 * ''Saxopéra'', for saxophone, 1955 * ''Furia italiana'', opera, 1958 * ''Concertino'' for organ, strings and percussion, 1958 * ''Concerto pour tête-à-tête'', opera, 1959 * ''Migraine'', comic opera, 1959 * ''Toccata et Tarentelle'' for two guitars, 1959 * ''Andante und Fileuse'' for saxophone, 1959 * ''Concerto'' for two guitars, 1964 * ''Quatre poèmes de Paul Gilson'', 1965 * ''Le Diable à deux'' for two pianos, 1970 * ''Tarentelle'' for orchestra, 1971 * ''Suite'' for two cellos and orchestra, 1974 * ''Orphée'', ballet, 1975 * ''Oregon'', piano suite for children, 1979 * ''Mouvement perpétuel'' for guitar, 1984

Writings

* ''Autour de la chanson française'', 1952 * ''Verdi'', 1958 * ''Ravel'', 1970 * ''Mozart'', 1991

References

* "Pierre Petit", in '' Sax,

Mule The mule is a domestic equine hybrid between a donkey, and a horse. It is the offspring of a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). The horse and the donkey are different species, with different numbers of chromosomes; of the two ...

& Co'',

Jean-Pierre Thiollet Jean-Pierre Thiollet (; born 9 December 1956) is a French writer and journalist. He is also affiliated with the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions, a European trade union. Career Thiollet attended a school in Châtelleraul ...

, H & D, Paris, 2004, s. 160-161
Pierre Petit
in the Encyclopédie Universalis

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Petit, Pierre French operetta composers People from Poitiers 1922 births 2000 deaths 20th-century French classical composers Conservatoire de Paris alumni École Normale de Musique de Paris alumni Academic staff of the École Normale de Musique de Paris Composers for the classical guitar Prix de Rome for composition French music critics