French composer, music critic, theoretician and poet.

Carol Bérard was born on 5 April 1881 in Marseille, France, and died on 13 December 1942 in Paris. He was Isaac Albéniz's student and was somewhat close to Maurice Ravel. He was secretary of the Union des compositeurs français, founder of the Union syndicale des compositeurs de musique, administrator of the Société Musique, founding member of "C.T.I. Bulletin de la confédération des travailleurs intellectuels, revue de documentation", editor of the "Revue Internationale de Musique et Danse" and France's chief representative on the Permanent Council for the International Cooperation of Composers at the International Music Festival in Vichy throughout the 1930s. He also represented the Union fédérale des Associations de Compositeurs de Musique and the Comité national de propagande pour la musique at the 1931 meeting of the Ligue de Défense de l'art musical et théâtral. Bérard met Manuel de Falla in his capacity as secretary and editor of the "Revue Internationale de Musique et Danse", managing his subscription to the magazine and organizing concerts attended by the composer. As the French delegate on the permanent council of Les Archives Internationales de la Musique contemporaine, he received a grant from the French Ministry of Education to find a home for the archives.

He wrote reviews for "Paris Le Soir" and "La Revue Mondiale" and published poetry under the pen name "Olivier Réaltor". He was one of the first Western composers to absorb Japanese culture, an influence reflected in "Haï-Kaï", three musical pieces on haikus published in 1926. Bérard also composed "Symphonie des forces mécaniques", "L'Aeroplane sur la ville", "Danses sous la pluie", "Tendrement et L'Âme des Iris" and "L'Oiseau des îles" in "La Chromophonie. Essai sur la couleur en mouvement concordance des vibrations sonores et lumineuses" (1919), he suggested combining colour and light and generally associated the fundamental properties of music with light. He and Valére Bernard also invented a colour-music device that projected different shades on a spinning globe. In 1931 he was made a Knight in the Legion of Honour.