Paul Dukas

Paul Abraham Dukas was born in Paris on 1 October 1865, a studious and self-critical man whose retiring personality masked an unforgiving standard: he abandoned and destroyed many of his own compositions. He belonged to neither the conservative nor progressive camps splitting French music at the turn of the century, yet commanded respect from both sides, drawing on influences from Beethoven to Debussy. His surviving catalog includes an opera, Ariane et Barbe-bleue, a Symphony in C, a Piano Sonata in E-flat minor, Variations on a theme by Rameau, and the ballet La Péri. Alongside composing, he wrote criticism for five French journals and later taught at the Conservatoire de Paris and the École normale, shaping students like Messiaen, Rodrigo, and Duruflé. He died on 17 May 1935, his reputation resting on a fraction of what he wrote - and mostly on The Sorcerer's Apprentice, the 1897 tone poem that became a global earworm after Disney set it to animation in Fantasia.