Report on Music, Intertextuality, & Inter-Art Forms in Third Republic France:
Remembering Paul Dukas at 150 Conference at Maynooth University

Dr Laura Watson
Maynooth University, October 2015

An international conference titled Music, Intertextuality, & Inter-Art Forms in Third Republic France: Remembering Paul Dukas at 150 was held in Maynooth University Music Department, from 3 – 5 July 2015. The committee wish to express their gratitude to the SMI for supporting this as an Associated Event. Around 50 delegates from around the world attended the conference. It acted a forum for researchers to reflect on the interrelationships between Dukas’s activities as a composer, critic, pedagogue, and editor. It further stimulated a broader dialogue on French music and artistic collaboration c.1870 – 1940 between musicologists, performers, and literary scholars. Invited guests included the Dublin pianist Thérèse Fahy (Royal Irish Academy of Music), who performed a Debussy and Dukas recital. The scholar and pianist Roy Howat (Royal Academy of Music in London/Royal Conservatoire of Scotland) gave a plenary address on Ravel’s Piano Trio. The late Daniel Albright (Harvard University) had been invited to deliver the keynote lecture; a draft of his paper ‘Lost in the Labyrinth: The Ariadne of Dukas and Maeterlinck’ was read at a session held in his memory. Laura Watson and Helen Julia Minors intend to produce an edited collection of essays stemming from the central Dukas theme in the near future.