Pierre Février (21 March 1696 – 5 November 1760) was a French baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist.

Biography

Born in Abbeville in 1696, he arrived in Paris in 1720 and served as titular organist of two churches on Saint-Honoré street: the Jacobins' church (destroyed at the Revolution) and Saint-Roch (still standing). Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, who moved to Paris in 1750, was among his pupils and eventually succeeded Février at Saint-Roch. Pierre Février died in Paris on 5 November 1760.

Works

Two volumes of his harpsichord pieces are extant. The first one is dated 1734 and contains five suites: The second volume, composed after 1734 and before 1737, was discovered in the late 1990s in a private collection in Belgium (Arenberg). It contains two harpsichord suites that follow a similar pattern, mixing dances and descriptive pièces de caractère in the typical late Baroque French tradition: