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PAUL ABRAHAM DUKAS

1stOctober 1865 --- 17thMay 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 Velléda (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 Écrits 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 thème de Rameau (1903) represent
an elegant translation  into French idiom  and style  of Beethoven's  Diabelli Variations,  Opus 120.   The ballet La Péri (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,  François Couperin, and Domenico Scarlatti and of the piano works of
Beethoven.

Copyright The New Encyclopædia Britannica, 15th Edition.

I like to thank Scott Anderson for providing the music and bio on this composer.

Last Updated on 2017
By Steven Ritchie

And now for the Music

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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