Ernst Ferand

Ernst Thomas Ferand (born Ernő Freund; 5 March 1887 – 29 May 1972 ) was an American musicologist and music educator of Hungarian birth. He was also known as Ernest Ferand and Ernst Ferand-Freund.

Biography

Ferand was born in 1887 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary. He attended the Royal National Hungarian Academy of Music and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. He became interested in the methods of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, and from 1925 to 1938 he taught at Dalcroze's Schule Hellerau-Laxenburg in Austria. In 1938 he published the influential treatise Die Improvisation in der Musik (Improvisation in Music).

He fled Europe after the Nazi annexation of Austria, finding refuge in the United States. From 1939 until 1965 Ferand was affiliated with the New School of Social Research. He wrote a number of articles which were published in The Musical Quarterly and the Journal of the American Musicological Society.

In 1974, Bruno Nettl wrote that Ferand was "the single outstanding authority in international musicology on this subject [of improvisation]." Peter Wishart described Ferand as "perhaps the most widely acknowledged authority on the subject [of improvisation in Western music.]"

Ferand died on May 29, 1972, in Basel, Switzerland.