PAUL ABRAHAM DUKAS, French Composer (1865-1935). Paul Abraham Dukas free midi downloads.

PAUL ABRAHAM DUKAS
1^stOctober 1865 --- 17^thMay 1935

Paul Abraham Dukas was born in 1865 and died at Paris in 1935, French composer whose fame rests on a single orchestral work, the
dazzling, ingenious L'Apprenti sorcier (1897, The Sorcerer's Apprentice).

Dukas studied at the Paris Conservatory and, after winning a second Grand Prix de Rome with his cantata Velleda (1888), established
his position among the younger French composers with the overture, first performed in 1892, to Pierre Corneille's Polyeucte and with
the Symphony in C Major (1896). The rest of his output (never large, owing to his own strict censorship of his works) was mainly
dramatic and program music and compositions for piano. Dukas, a master of orchestration, was from 1910 to 1912 professor of the
orchestral class at the Paris Conservatory, and from 1927 until his death he was professor of composition there. He also contributed
musical criticism to several Paris papers, and his collected writings, Les Ecrits de Paul Dukas sur la musique (1948), included some
of the best essays ever published on Jean-Philippe Rameau, Christoph Gluck, and Hector Berlioz.

Dukas's L'Apprenti sorcier (based on J.W. von Goethe's "Zauberlehrling") was a piece of descriptive music written at the same time
and in much the same style as Richard Strauss's Till Eulenspiegel. Yet Dukas's musicianship was of a considerably wider range than
his brilliant period piece suggests. His Sonate (1901) is one of the last great works for piano that prolong the tradition of Ludwig van
Beethoven, Robert Schumann, and Franz Liszt; his Variations, interlude et final pour piano sur un theme de Rameau (1903) represent
an elegant translation into French idiom and style of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations, Opus 120. The ballet La Peri (1912), on the
other hand, displays of his mastery of impressionist scoring, and, in his opera Ariane et Barbe-Bleue (1907), on the play of Maurice
Maeterlinck, the atmosphere and musical texture make up for the lack of dramatic impact.

After 1912, Dukas ceased publishing his compositions-except for a piano piece written in memory of his admirer Claude Debussy, the
evocative La Plainte au loin du faune (1920), and a song setting, the charming Sonnet de Ronsard (1924). A few weeks before his
death, he destroyed several of his musical manuscripts. Dukas collaborated with the Paris publishing firm of Durand in preparing
modern editions of some of the works of Jean-Philippe Rameau, Francois Couperin, and Domenico Scarlatti and of the piano works of
Beethoven.

Copyright The New Encyclopadia Britannica, 15th Edition.

I like to thank Scott Anderson for providing the music and bio on this composer.
Last Updated on October 2025
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

NEW (4795)"Part of the Sonate". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

(4658)"Prelude Elegiaque". Sequenced by Steven Ritchie.

NEW (4799)"Villanelle for Horn and Orchestra". Sequencer Unknown.

NEW (4799)"A unknown piece to me". Sequencer Unknown.

Thanks to Scott for the music below, Email (hi_desert01@hotmail.com)

(2930)"The Sorcerer's Apprentice,(L'Apprenti sorcier)". Sequenced by Scott Anderson.

(2931)"The Sorcerer's Apprentice,(Fantasia version)". Sequenced by Scott Anderson.

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