Roger Sessions

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Roger Huntington Sessions (28 December 1896 – 16 March 1985) was an American 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 first at Princeton University, moved to the University of California, Berkeley, where he taught from 1946 to 1954, and then returned to Princeton 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, John Veale, Peter Maxwell Davies 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 (Pages from a 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 birdsong 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.)

[edit] Books

Cone, Edward, ed. Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays. Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press. 1979. ISBN 0-691-09126-9 and ISBN 0-691-10074-8.
Olmstead, Andrea. Conversations with Roger Sessions. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1987. ISBN 1-55553-010-9.
Olmstead, Andrea. The Correspondence of Roger Sessions. Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1992. ISBN 1-55553-122-9.
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 0-674-74350-4.