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Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896March 16, 1985) was an American
composer A composer is a person who writes music. The term is especially used to indicate composers of Western classical music, or those who are composers by occupation. Many composers are, or were, also skilled performers of music. Etymology and def ...
, teacher, and writer on music. He had started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved towards complex harmonies and postromanticism, and finally the twelve-tone serialism of the Second Viennese School. Sessions's friendship with
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...
influenced him, but he modified his technique to a unique style involving rows to supply melodic themes, while composing subsidiary parts freely.


Life

Sessions was born in
Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the
American Revolution The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendant of Samuel Huntington, a signatory of the
Declaration of Independence A declaration of independence is an assertion by a polity in a defined territory that it is independent and constitutes a state. Such places are usually declared from part or all of the territory of another state or failed state, or are breaka ...
. Roger studied music at
Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...
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 Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...
under Horatio Parker and Ernest Bloch before teaching at
Smith College Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts, United States. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smit ...
. With the exception, mostly, of his
incidental music Incidental music is music in a play, television program, radio program, video game, or some other presentation form that is not primarily musical. The term is less frequently applied to film music, with such music being referred to instead as th ...
to the play ''The Black Maskers'', composed in part in Cleveland in 1923, his first major compositions came while he was traveling Europe with his first wife in his mid-twenties and early thirties. Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
(from 1936), moved to the
University of California The University of California (UC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university, research university system in the U.S. state of California. Headquartered in Oakland, California, Oakland, the system is co ...
, Berkeley, where he taught from 1945 to 1953, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965. He was elected a Fellow of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...
in 1961. He was appointed Bloch Professor at Berkeley (1966–67), and gave the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University in 1968–69. He continued to teach on a part-time basis at the
Juilliard School The Juilliard School ( ) is a Private university, private performing arts music school, conservatory in New York City. Founded by Frank Damrosch as the Institute of Musical Art in 1905, the school later added dance and drama programs and became ...
from 1966 until 1983. He was a friend of both
Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...
and
Thomas Mann Paul Thomas Mann ( , ; ; 6 June 1875 – 12 August 1955) was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and the 1929 Nobel Prize in Literature laureate. His highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novell ...
. In 1968 Sessions was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts by the MacDowell Colony. Sessions won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1974 citing "his life's work as a distinguished American composer." In 1982 he won the annual Pulitzer Prize for Music for his Concerto for Orchestra, first performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra on October 23, 1981. Sessions married Barbara Foster in June 1920. They divorced in September 1936. He married Sarah Elizabeth Franck in November 1936. They had two children, John Porter Sessions (1938–2014) and Elizabeth Phelps Sessions (born 1940). John Sessions became a professional cellist. Roger Sessions died at the age of 88 in
Princeton, New Jersey The Municipality of Princeton is a Borough (New Jersey), borough in Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey, Borough of Princeton and Pri ...
.


Style

His works written up to 1930 or so are more or less neoclassical in style. Those written between 1930 and 1945 are more or less tonal but harmonically complex. The works from 1946 onwards are atonal and, beginning with the Solo Violin Sonata of 1953, serial although not consistently employing Viennese
twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ...
. Only the first movement and the trio of the scherzo of the Violin Sonata, for example, employ a twelve-tone row strictly, the rest employing a scalar-constructed dissonant style. Sessions's usual method was to use a row to control the full chromaticism and motivic-intervallic cohesion that already marks his music from before 1953. He treated his rows with great freedom, however, typically using pairs of unordered complementary hexachords to provide “harmonic” aspects without determining note-by-note melodic succession, or conversely using the row to supply melodic thematic material while freely composing the subsidiary parts.


Major works

*3 Chorale Preludes for Organ (1924–26) * Symphony No. 1 (1927) *''The Black Maskers'' Orchestral Suite (1928) *Piano Sonata No. 1 (1930) * Violin Concerto (1935) *String Quartet No. 1 (1936) *''From My Diary'' (Pages from a Diary) (1940) *Duo for Violin and Piano (1942) * Piano Sonata No. 2 (1946) * Symphony No. 2 (1946) *''The Trial of Lucullus'' (1947), one-act opera *String Quartet No. 2 (1951) *Sonata for Solo Violin (1953) *''Idyll of Theocritus'' (1954) *Mass, for unison chorus and organ (1956) *Piano Concertodedicated to the memory of
Artur Schnabel Artur Schnabel (17 April 1882 – 15 August 1951) was an Austrian-born classical pianist, composer and Pedagogy, pedagogue. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura. Among the 20th ...
. Premiered in Louisville in June of 1956. Se
Fleisher Collection Catalog Entry
(1956) * Symphony No. 3 (1957) *String Quintet (1957 or 1957–58) * Symphony No. 4 (1958) *Divertimento for orchestra (1959) *'' Montezuma'' (ca. 1940–1962, 1940s–1962, orchestration finished 1963, 1935–63, or 1941–64), opera in three acts (libretto by Giuseppe Antonio Borgese) * 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, Cello and Orchestra (1970–1971) *''When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd'' (1971) *''Three Choruses on Biblical Texts'' (1971) *Concertino for Chamber Orchestra (1972) *Five Pieces for Piano (1975) * Symphony No. 9 (October 1978) * Concerto for Orchestra (1981) *Duo for Violin and Violoncello (1981), incomplete Some works received their first professional performance many years after completion. The Sixth Symphony (1966) was given its first complete performance on March 4, 1977, by the Juilliard Orchestra in New York City. The Ninth Symphony (1978), commissioned by the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and Frederik Prausnitz, was premiered on January 17, 1980, by the same orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene.


Writings

* Sessions, Roger. ''Harmonic Practice.'' New York: Harcourt, Brace. 1951. . * —. ''Reflections on the Music Life in the United States.'' New York: Merlin Press. 1956. . * —. ''The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener.'' Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1950, republished 1958. * —. ''Questions About Music.'' Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1970, reprinted New York: Norton, 1971. . * —. ''Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays'', edited by Edward T. Cone. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. (cloth) (pbk)


Notable students

* List of music students by teacher: R to S#Roger Sessions


References


Citations


Sources

* * * * * * * * (pbk.) (ebook) *


Further reading

* * Olmstead, Andrea. ''Conversations with Roger Sessions.'' Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987. . * Olmstead, Andrea. ''The Correspondence of Roger Sessions.'' Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992. .


External links


Roger Sessions' page at Theodore Presser CompanyThe Roger Sessions SocietyAndrea Olmstead
contains a discography
Andrea Olmstead papers, 1970–2013
Music Division, The New York Public Library. Olmstead's papers include correspondence with Sessions, transcripts of interviews with Sessions, and other records of Olmstead's Sessions research.
The Seymour Shifrin Papers at Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University
Shifrin's papers include two MSS by Roger Sessions * {{DEFAULTSORT:Sessions, Roger 1896 births 1985 deaths 20th-century American classical composers Twelve-tone and serial composers American electronic musicians Harvard University alumni Kent School alumni American opera composers American male opera composers Princeton University faculty Pulitzer Prize for Music winners Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards winners Pupils of Edward Burlingame Hill Pupils of Ernest Bloch Pupils of Horatio Parker Smith College faculty University of California, Berkeley alumni Yale School of Music alumni Black Mountain College faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 20th-century American musicologists 20th-century American male musicians