Roger Sessions
Roger Huntington Sessions (
28 December 1896 –
16 March 1985) was an
composer, critic and teacher of music.
Born in
Brooklyn, New York to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution, Sessions studied music at
Harvard University from the age of 14. There, he wrote for and subsequently edited the
Harvard Musical Review. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at
Yale University under
Horatio Parker and
Ernest Bloch before teaching at
Smith College. His first major compositions were made while travelling
Europe in his mid twenties and early thirties with his wife.
Returning to the United States in
1933, he taught at
Princeton University until retiring in
1965, although he continued to teach on a part‐time basis at the
Juilliard School until
1983. His notable students include
Milton Babbitt,
Andrew Imbrie,
Ellen Zwilich,
Peter Westergaard,
Claire Polin,
John Harbison,
Larry Thomas Bell,
David Del Tredici, and
Robert Helps. He died at the age of 88 in
Princeton, New Jersey.
His major works include:
*Symphony No. 1 (
1927)
The Black Maskers Orchestral Suite (
1928)
*Piano Sonata No. 1 (
1930)
*Violin Concerto (
1935)
*String Quartet No. 1 (
1936)
*Duo for Violin and Piano (
1942)
From my Diary (
1940)
*Piano Sonata No. 2 (
1946)
*Symphony No. 2 (
1946)
The Trial of Lucullus (
1947), A one act opera
*String Quartet No. 2 (
1951)
*Sonata for Solo Violin (
1953)
Idyll of Theocritus (
1954)
*Piano Concerto (
1956)
*Symphony No. 3 (
1957)
*Symphony No. 4 (
1958)
*String Quintet (
1958)
*Divertimento for Orchestra (
1959)
Montezuma (
1963), An opera in three acts
*Symphony No. 5 (
1964)
*Piano Sonata No. 3 (
1965)
*Symphony No. 6 (
1966)
*Six Pieces for Violoncello (
1966)
*Symphony No. 7 (
1967)
*Symphony No. 8 (
1968)
*Rhapsody for Orchestra (
1970)
*Concerto for Violin, Violoncello, and Orchestra (
1971)
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d (
1971)
*Concertino for Chamber Orchestra (
1972)
*Five Pieces for Piano (
1975)
*Symphony No. 9 (
1978)
*Concerto for Orchestra (
1981)
*Duo for Violin and Violoncello (
1981), incomplete
His works from the Solo Violin Sonata of 1953 on are almost all
serial. Those up to 1930 or so are more or less
neoclassical in sound, while those written between 1930 and 1951 are more or less
tonal but harmonically complex. The opening minutes of the Second and Third Symphonies, the one nominally in D minor, the other serial though still somewhat tonal, might be contrasted in this connection, the former chaotic and over the map, the latter bird‐song influenced, at peace; not quite the relation between tonal and less‐tonal/serial music that usually prevails. (Then again, the opening movement of the Fourth Symphony, a Burlesque, quotes the aforementioned passage from the Second, in agitation not least, and matters are put to rights.)
* Cone, Edward, ed.
Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. 1979. ISBN 0691091269 and ISBN 0691100748.
* Olmstead, Andrea.
Conversations with Roger Sessions. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1987. ISBN 1555530109.
* Olmstead, Andrea.
The Correspondence of Roger Sessions. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1992. ISBN 1555531229.
* Sessions, Roger.
Harmonic Practice. New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1951. LCCN 51008476.
* Sessions, Roger.
Reflections on the Music Life in the United States. New York: Merlin Press. 1956. LCCN 56012976.
* Sessions, Roger.
The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1950, republished 1958.
* Sessions, Roger.
Questions About Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1970, reprinted New York: Norton, 1971. ISBN 0674743504.
*
The Roger Sessions Society *
Art of the States: Roger Sessions*
biographer/Andrea Olmstead
