Pierre Petit

Pierre Petit (1922–2000) was a French composer, pedagogue, and musicologist. Trained at the Paris Conservatoire with Nadia Boulanger and Henri Busser, he won the Premier Grand Prix de Rome in 1946 and composed operas, ballets, orchestral and chamber works, and songs, including Furia italiana, Ciné-Bijou, and Orphée. Petit served as director of the École Normale de Musique de Paris for 35 years, taught at the Conservatoire de Paris, and worked as musical director at the French national radio and television. He was also a noted writer on Verdi, Ravel, and Mozart, and received the Grand Prix du Conseil Général de la Seine (1965) and the Grand Music Prize of SACEM (1985).