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 Ben, der Zauberlehrling (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large number of his compositions were unpublished, and most of these he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.
