thumb|right|Paul Dukas

Paul Abraham Dukas ( 1 October 1865 – 17 May 1935) was a French composer, critic, scholar and teacher. A studious man of retiring personality, he was intensely self-critical and abandoned and destroyed many of his compositions. His best-known work is the orchestral piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice (L'apprenti sorcier), the fame of which has eclipsed that of his other surviving works, largely due to its usage in the 1940 Disney film Fantasia. Among these are the opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, his Symphony in C and Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, the Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau (for solo piano), and a ballet, La Péri.

At a time when French musicians were divided into conservative and progressive factions, Dukas adhered to neither but retained the admiration of both. His compositions were influenced by composers including Beethoven, Berlioz, Franck, d'Indy and Debussy.

In tandem with his composing career, Dukas worked as a music critic, contributing regular reviews to at least five French journals. Later in his life he was appointed professor of composition at the Conservatoire de Paris and the École normale de musique de Paris; his pupils included Maurice Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen, Walter Piston, Manuel Ponce, Joaquín Rodrigo and Xian Xinghai.

Life and career

Early years

thumb|left|Dukas's teachers, [[Georges Mathias (top l.), Théodore Dubois (top r.) and Ernest Guiraud (bottom l.), and Dukas' fellow student Claude Debussy]]

Dukas was born in Paris, the second son in a Jewish family of three children. When Dukas was five years old, his mother died giving birth to her third child, Marguerite-Lucie. He entered the Conservatoire de Paris at the end of 1881, aged 16, and studied piano with Georges Mathias, harmony with Théodore Dubois and composition with Ernest Guiraud. Among his fellow students was Claude Debussy, with whom Dukas formed a close friendship. After compulsory military service he began a dual career as a composer and a music critic.

The Symphony in C major was composed in 1895–96, when Dukas was in his early 30s. It is dedicated to Paul Vidal, and had its first performance in January 1896, under the direction of the dedicatee. The symphony was better received when the Lamoureux Orchestra revived it in 1902. based on Goethe's poem "Der Zauberlehrling". There are also two smaller works for piano solo. The Sonata, described by the critic Edward Lockspeiser as "huge and somewhat recondite", did not enter the mainstream repertoire, but it has been more recently championed by such pianists as Marc-André Hamelin and Margaret Fingerhut. Lockspeiser describes the Rameau Variations as more developed and assured ... Dukas infuses the conventional form with a new and powerful spirit." The author had intended the libretto to be set by Grieg but in 1899 he offered it to Dukas. and Sir Thomas Beecham, who pronounced it "one of the finest lyrical dramas of our time", and staged it at Covent Garden in 1937. Interest in it revived in the 1990s, with productions in Paris (Théâtre du Châtelet, 1990) and Hamburg (Staatsoper, 1997),

Dukas's last major work was the sumptuous oriental ballet La Péri (1912). Described by the composer as a "poème dansé" it depicts a young Persian prince who travels to the ends of the Earth in a quest to find the lotus flower of immortality, coming across its guardian, the Péri (fairy). Because of the very quiet opening pages of the ballet score, the composer added a brief "Fanfare pour précéder La Peri" which gave the typically noisy audiences of the day time to settle in their seats before the work proper began. La Péri was written for the Russian-French dancer Natalia Trouhanova, who starred in the first performance at the Châtelet in 1912. Diaghilev planned a production with his Ballets Russes but the production did not take place; the company's choreographer Fokine staged L'apprenti sorcier as a ballet in 1916. As a teacher he was conservative but always encouraging of talent, telling one student, "It's obvious that you really love music. Always remember that it should be written from the heart and not with the head." After several years of silence, in 1920 he produced a tribute to his friend Debussy in the form of La plainte, au loin, du faune... for piano, which was followed by Amours, a setting of a sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard, for voice and piano, published in 1924 to mark the four hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth.

Dukas died in Paris in 1935, aged 69. He was cremated and his ashes were placed in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

List of works

Published by the composer

  • Polyeucte, overture for orchestra (1891)
  • Symphony in C (1895–96)
  • The Sorcerer's Apprentice, for orchestra (1897)
  • Piano Sonata in E-flat minor (1899–1900)
  • Variations, Interlude and Finale on a Theme by Rameau, for piano (c.1899–1902)
  • Ariane et Barbe-bleue, opera (1899–1907)
  • Villanelle, for horn and piano (1906)
  • Prélude élégiaque sur le nom de Haydn, for piano (1909)
  • Vocalise-étude (alla gitana), for voice and piano (1909)
  • La Péri, ballet (poème dansé) (1911; later supplemented with Fanfare pour précéder La Péri (1912))
  • La plainte, au loin, du faune..., for piano (1920)
  • Amours, sonnet for voice and piano (1924)
  • Allegro, for piano (1925; published posthumously in 2022)

Early unpublished works

  • Air de Clytemnestre, for voice and small orchestra (1882)
  • Goetz de Berlichingen, overture for orchestra (1883)
  • Le roi Lear, overture for orchestra (1883)
  • Chanson de Barberine, for soprano and orchestra (1884)
  • La fête des Myrthes, for choir and orchestra (1884)
  • L'ondine et le pêcheur, for soprano and orchestra (1884)
  • Endymion, cantata for three solo voices and orchestra (1885)
  • Introduction au poème "Les Caresses", for piano (1885)
  • La vision de Saül, cantata for three solo voices and orchestra (1886)
  • La fleur, for choir and orchestra (1887)
  • Fugue, for four voices in open instrumentation (1888)
  • Hymne au soleil, for choir and orchestra (1888)
  • Velléda, cantata for three solo voices and orchestra (1888)
  • Sémélé, cantata for three solo voices and orchestra (1889)

Destroyed and projected works

  • Horn et Riemenhild, opera (1892)
  • L'arbre de science, opera (1899)
  • Le fil de parque, symphonic poem (c.1908)
  • Le nouveau monde, opera (c.1908–1910)
  • Le sang de Méduse, ballet (1912)
  • Symphony No. 2 (after 1912)
  • Violin Sonata (after 1912)
  • La tempête, opera (c.1918)
  • Variations choréographiques, ballet (1930)
  • An untitled orchestral work for the Boston Symphony Orchestra (1932)

References

Sources

Further reading

  • Free scores at the Mutopia Project