Paul Dukas

Paul Dukas was born into a cultured environment with a love of literature and history. Although his mother – an outstanding pianist – gave him his first music lessons at a very early age, it was only when he was around 14 that he seems to have felt any calling for music. He studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where he met Debussy (with whom he became friendly) and won both a premier prix in counterpoint and fugue and, in 1888, a second prize in the Prix de Rome for his cantata Velléda. But the work on which his worldwide reputation rests is L’Apprenti sorcier (The Sorcerer's Apprentice), a "symphonic scherzo after a ballad by Goethe", completed in 1897. A consummate musical craftsman admired by composers as disparate as Saint-Saens, Debussy, Fauré and d'Indy. Dukas placed his vast culture and artistic experience at the disposal of musical criticism and teaching and for many years taught composition at both the Paris Conservatoire and the École Normale de Musique. At the same time, he kept his hand in as a composer with chamber music, with his "danced poem for orchestra", La péri (1912), and, above all, with his "conte lyrique", Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris inn 1907 and hailed by d'Indy as "the finest piece for the theatre since Wagner".