ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a new perspective to Paul Dukas research by refocusing the study of his critical writings, specifically his publications from the 1890s and early 1900s. By 1923, Andre-Clement Marot was highlighting composer-critics Schumann and Dukas as vital intellectual forces and historicising the intrinsic worth of the latter’s fin de siecle writings. In the 1893 piece, Dukas had modelled an intellectual approach to French music criticism that melded Cesar Cui’s history of Russian composers with personal memories of hearing these orchestral works, in order to produce a textured account of the repertoire. To phrase it in a way that recalls Edward Said’s critiques of textuality, Dukas was fundamentally interested in accessing the ‘human work’ that governed a score or text. That awareness of composing and writing as socially grounded in historical, cultural, and personal circumstances left an invaluable critical legacy. It stands as both an artefact of its era and as a prompt for future critical conversations.
