Paul Dukas(1865-1935)

Paul Abraham Dukas was born on October 1, 1865 into a Jewish family in Paris, France. He studied music at the Paris Conservatoire, where his teachers were Theodore Dubois, César Franck, and 'Ernest Guiraud'. He met Claude Debussy while both were students at the Paris Conservatoire and they remained life-long friends. After graduation from Conservatoire Dukas worked as an orchestrator and critic.

Ducas was also a serious critic of his own works. While he wrote a fair amount of music pieces in various genres, he was satisfied with only a few, that he let to remain. His "Symphony" (1896) was written in the grand tradition of Ludwig van Beethoven and César Franck. Building on the experience of his Beethovenian symphony, Dukas experimented with a variety of orchestral instruments in order to achieve his own distinctive orchestration. Inspired by his readings of "Der Zauberlehrling", a poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Dukas took on composing "L'apprenti sorcerer" (The Sorcerer's Apprentice) (1897). Truly a masterpiece, this symphonic work evolved with a lush score displaying intricate rhythmic patterns and his most illustrious orchestration. In it's soundscapes, alluding to both the preceding Classicism and Romanticism, and to his contemporary impressionism, Dukas had a premonition of the future styles of the coming 20th century. The lush score of "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" was used by Fantasia (1940) and in the newer Fantasia 2000 (1999). It was also used for a certain movie named The Sorcerer's Apprentice (2001) released in 2001.

At the peak of his musical career Dukas was inspired by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and his "Ballet Russes". He composed ballet "La Peri" (1912) for Diaghilev. His other works include the technically challenging "Sonata" (1901), "Variations on the theme of Rameau" (1902), and the opera "Ariane et Barbe-bleue" (Ariane and the Bliebeard), based on libretto by Maeterlinck.

A distinguished professor of composition, Dukas had such apprentices as Olivier Messiaen, Maurice Durufle, 'Joaquin Rodrigo', Jehan Alain, and many others. A large number of his compositions were unpublished, and most of these he chose to destroy prior to his death. Paul Dukas died on May 17, 1935 in Paris, and was laid to rest in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France.