Paul Dukas (1865-1935); FRA

Paul Dukas (1865–1935) was a French composer, critic, editor, and teacher whose exacting self-criticism resulted in a small but exceptionally polished body of surviving music. Born in Paris, he entered the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied with Théodore Dubois and Ernest Guiraud and formed a lasting friendship with Claude Debussy. Although he competed several times for the Prix de Rome, he never won the first prize and left the Conservatoire without the conventional distinction expected of an ambitious French composer. Dukas built a broad career as composer and perceptive music critic, writing on both contemporary and earlier repertory. He later taught at the Paris Conservatoire and the École Normale de Musique, where his pupils included Olivier Messiaen and other important twentieth-century musicians. Famously severe in judging his own work, he destroyed a number of compositions he considered unworthy of preservation.

Dukas combined rigorous Classical construction with sumptuous late-Romantic orchestration and a distinctly French sensitivity to color and detail. His enduringly popular symphonic scherzo The Sorcerer's Apprentice, based on Goethe, demonstrates brilliant orchestral characterization and formal control far beyond its familiar programmatic effects. The large-scale Symphony in C reveals his command of symphonic development, while the Piano Sonata in E-flat minor is an ambitious contribution to the French keyboard repertory. His opera Ariane et Barbe-bleue, on a text by Maurice Maeterlinck, combines Wagnerian breadth with luminous orchestration and psychological symbolism. The late piano work La plainte, au loin, du faune... pays tribute to Debussy. Dukas’s limited catalogue belies his importance: his craftsmanship, critical intelligence, and teaching linked the French fin-de-siècle tradition with a younger generation that would reshape twentieth-century music.

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Read biography at allmusic.com.