Published
Pièce pour le tombeau de Paul Dukas
This piece forms part of Le tombeau de Paul Dukas, a set of nine works written in memory of the composer Paul Dukas, who died in 1935. The participating composers were Florent Schmitt, Manuel de Falla, Gabriel Pierné, Guy Ropartz, Joaquín Rodrigo, Julien Krein, Tony Aubin, Elsa Barraine and, of course, Olivier Messiaen. Some of them, including Joaquín Rodrigo, had studied with Dukas; others, such as Manuel de Falla, were his friends.
What is a tombeau? The word literally means “tomb,” although it can also suggest a fall, a meaning Jonathan Harvey draws upon in his Tombeau de Messiaen. A famous twentieth-century example is Ravel’s Le tombeau de Couperin, composed in memory of several friends who died during the First World War.