MUS223 - Milestone3

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223

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English

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Jan 9, 2024

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Ericka Mathis MUS 223 Milestone 3 The Sorcerer’s Apprentice Paul Dukas The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, or L’apprenti sorcier in French, was composed by Paul Dukas . Dukas started writing the symphonic poem in 1896 and finished it in 1897 . Paul Dukas was a French composer who was born and died in Paris, France . He was a perfectionist who was known to destroy his own compositions to keep those that were not what he deemed as perfect out of the hands and ears of others . (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998) Dukas was a composer in the romantic era . This piece has characteristics of the romantic era, most notably the inspiration of the composition being a piece of literature . There is also Dukas’s use of melody throughout the piece to show continuity throughout and hold the interest of the audience . The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is by far Dukas’s most well-known piece and was inspired by Johann von Goethe’s poem of the same name, known in German as "Der Zauberlehrling" . (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1998) Its orchestration includes a “piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion, harp, and strings” and shortly after completing the piece Dukas conducted the
premiere at the Societé Nationale de Musique . (Redlands Symphony, 2020) It was instantly popular and has only grown more so throughout the years . As this piece was written and inspired by a poem it was meant to tell the story in the poem and does so with the use of a repeated melody to represent the magic, the sorcerer, and his apprentice . Dukas also uses differences in tempo and dynamics to tell the story of the apprentice who used magic without permission and lost control of it . Dukas brings in a chaotic element to symbolize when the magic gets out of hand the music is played in forte, there are melodies played on top of and around each other, and when it all comes to a head with the crash of the cymbals . We hear the muted and confident melody representing the sorcerer we heard at the start as he comes back at the end to put things right .
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