Roger Sessions

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, Kenneth Frazelle, Larry Thomas Bell, Earl Kim, Peter Maxwell Davies, David Del Tredici, John Adams, Carlton Gamer, Miriam Gideon, John Harbison, Robert Helps, Will Ogdon, Walter Hekster, Andrew Imbrie, David Lewin, Claire Polin, William Schimmel, George Tsontakis, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, John Veale, Roger Nixon, Alan Fletcher, Peter Westergaard, and Henry Weinberg.

He died at the age of 88 in Princeton, New Jersey.

tyle

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.

Major Works

*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 (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 March 4 1977 by the Juilliard Orchestra in New York City [cite journal
last =
first =
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = News Section
journal =Tempo
volume = New Ser.
issue = 121
pages = 49
date = June 1977
url = http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0040-2982%28197706%292%3A0%3A121%3C47%3ANS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q
doi =
issn = 0040-2982
accessdate = 2007-06-27 ]

The Ninth Symphony (1978), commissioned by the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra and Frederik Prausnitz, was premiered January 17 1980 by the same orchestra conducted by Christopher Keene. [cite journal
last =Olmstead
first =Andrea
authorlink =
coauthors =
title = Roger Sessions's 9th Symphony
journal =Tempo
volume =New Ser.
issue =133/134
pages =79
date =September 1980
url =http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0040-2982%28198009%292%3A0%3A133%2F134%3C79%3ARS9S%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G
doi =
issn = 0040-2982
accessdate = 2007-06-27 ]

Publications

* 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.
* cite journal
last =Imbrie
first =Andrew
authorlink =Andrew Imbrie
coauthors =
title =The Symphonies of Roger Sessions
journal =Tempo
volume =New Ser.
publisher = Cambridge University Press
issue = 103
pages = 24–32
date = 1972
url =http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0040-2982%281972%292%3A0%3A103%3C24%3ATSORS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-V
doi =
issn = 0040-2982
accessdate =2007-06-27
* 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.

External links

* [http://www.uncwil.edu/music/sessionssociety/ The Roger Sessions Society]
* [http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?comp=12 Art of the States: Roger Sessions]
* [http://www.andreaolmstead.com/ biographer/Andrea Olmstead] contains a discography