Incomplete And Utter History Of Classical Music

1 ACROSS: CONFUSING GAME IN MUSIC FROM 1899 (6)

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efore we get to 1899, a stop-off, as promised, in the Paris of 1897. Paul Dukas was Paris born and bred. He lived in Paris, studied at the Paris Conservatoire and, indeed, would end up teaching composition there before his death, in Paris, at the age of sixty-nine. He was one of a number of young chaps who were very fond of the music of Lille-born composer Edouard Lalo. By 1897, though, Lab was dead, and Dukas was working on a symphonic poem - wasn't everybody? -which he hoped would make his name as a thirty-two-year-old composer with his very own voice. Sadly, in the incomplete and utter scheme of things, we haven't really got too much space to devote to M. Dukas, let alone Edouard Lalo (I hope against hope that he had two children called Leila and Lulu but I can find no evidence for it), except to mention two things. Firstly, in 1897, Dukas did, in fact, come up with a piece that established his own voice, namely The Sorcerer's Apprentice, beloved of Disney fans everywhere and originally written as a musical depiction of Goethe's story 'Der Zauberlerhling'. 'The Sorcerer's Apprentice' is one of those titles that is equally poetic in all three languages - in English, it certainly has a certain style and shape; in German it is impressively declamatory, and in French, it's simply sumptuous: VAppnnti Sorcierl Mmm. Gorgeous.) Secondly, the tragic thing about Dukas is that, some ten years or so after having found his voice, he lost it again - that is to say, when he was in his forties, he burned almost all the works he'd written since the age of twenty. Tragic. He's also one of those people who, when you discover their dates, seem to be in the wrong time. Before I knew anything about him, I had always put him in my mind next to Brahms or Mendelssohn. To find out he was still alive in 1935 came as a complete shock. Paul Dukas and, say… Churchill, sharing breathing space. Doesn't seem right, does it? But it is.

1899 is right on the edge. We are teetering not only over the vast unknown of a new century but also over the gaping chasm of a new era. A new musical era, that is. They would eventually call it MODERN - the Modern Era - which is a bit daft, if you ask me, because, well, of course it's modern, it was 'today'. What else would it be? And what do you call the period after that, then, eh, when you've burnt your bridges with 'modern'? The VERY modern era? The BLOODY modern era? The 'Ooh, it's so modern, it hurts' era? Exacdy! Where will we be then, eh? Well, that remains to be seen. For now, let me tick off my eras, otherwise the time and motion people will have me up on one: 0 Early 0 Medieval 0 Renaissance 0 Baroque 0 Classical 0 Early Romantic