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Image:Dukas image 01.jpg|frame|Paul DukasPaul
Dukas (October 1, 1865 – May 17, 1935) was a
France|French composer of classical music.

Dukas was born in Paris and studied, under
Théodore Dubois and Ernest Guiraud among others,
at the Conservatoire de Paris|Conservatoire there,
where he was a friend of Claude Debussy. After
completing his studies he found work as an
orchestrator and critic.

Although Dukas wrote a fair amount of music, he
destroyed many of his pieces out of
dissatisfaction with them, and only a few remain.
His first surviving work of note is the energetic
Symphony (1896) which belongs to the tradition of
Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven and CĂ©sar Franck.
It was followed by another orchestral work,
L'apprenti sorcier, better known under its English
title The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1897), which is
based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe|Goethe's poem
"Der Zauberlehrling". This piece was used in the
Walt Disney film Fantasia (movie)|Fantasia, which
accounts for much of its fame. Dukas's rhythmic
mastery and vivid orchestration are evident in
both works.

For the piano, Dukas wrote two complex and
technically demanding large-scale works, a Sonata
(1901) and Variations, interlude and finale on a
theme of Rameau (1902), again reminiscent of
Beethoven and Franck. The opera Ariane et
Barbe-Bleue ("Ariadne and Bluebeard"), on which he
worked from 1899 to 1907, has often been compared
to Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, partly
because of musical similarities and partly because
both operas are based on plays by Maurice
Maeterlinck. The sumptuous oriental ballet La
PĂ©ri (1912) was Dukas's last major work.

In the last decades of his life, Dukas became well
known as a teacher of composition, with many
famous students such as JoaquĂ­n Rodrigo, Maurice
Duruflé, Olivier Messiaen and Jehan Alain. He
died in Paris and is one of many famous people to
be buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery there.