Sessions, Roger (Huntington)

(b Brooklyn, NY, 28 Dec 1896; d Princeton, NJ, 16 March 1985). American composer, teacher and writer on music.

1. Life.

2. Works.

WORKS

WRITINGS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ANDREA OLMSTEAD

Sessions, Roger

1. Life.

Sessions was the third of four children whose parents were second cousins and came from old, but not wealthy, New England families. His maternal grandfather was an important Episcopalian bishop and religion played a significant role in the family. The parents separated when Sessions was four, a circumstance that ‘didn't make life easier for the children’.

An intellectual prodigy, Sessions had written an opera at the age of 13, entered Harvard at 14 and graduated with the BA (1915). He received the BMus from Yale (1917), where he studied with Horatio Parker. His most influential composition teacher was Ernest Bloch, whom Sessions sought out in New York in 1919. He taught at Smith College from 1917 to 1921, when he became Bloch's assistant at the Cleveland Institute (1921–25). In 1920 he married a Smith student, Barbara Foster. The couple lived in Europe from 1925 to 1933, supported by two Guggenheim Fellowships (in Paris and Florence), a three-year Rome Prize and a Carnegie grant (in Berlin). He had, therefore, first-hand experience of the rise of fascism in both Italy and Germany, and this sharpened his left-leaning political sensibilities.

During the years 1928–31 his close friend Copland presented the Copland-Sessions Concerts in New York. Since he was still in Europe, Sessions only distantly participated. Already fluent in French, German and Italian, he learnt Russian during this period, writing to Stravinsky, Slonimsky and Koussevitzky in their own language. After his return to the US, Sessions divorced in 1936 and married Elizabeth Franck, with whom he had two children. In the 1930s he was sometimes viewed more as a European than an American composer, and he befriended many Europeans who came to the US, including Krenek, Schnabel, Klemperer, Casella, Milhaud and Schoenberg. One of his closest relationships in the 1960s was with Dallapiccola.

Sessions was president of the American section of the ISCM (1934–42) and a teacher, briefly, at the Malkin Conservatory, the Dalcroze School, the Boston Conservatory and Douglass College. His teaching career at Princeton began in 1936. He left to teach at the University of California at Berkeley from 1945 to 1953, when he returned to Princeton until his retirement in 1965. He was appointed Bloch Professor at Berkeley (1966–7), and gave the Norton lectures at Harvard (1968–9). He accepted a post at the Juilliard School in 1966, remaining there until 1983. In his teaching and writing Sessions upheld high ideals, stressing craftsmanship and, by example, integrity of purpose. Numerous honours were bestowed on him including election to the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1953) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1961), the Brandeis Creative Arts Award (1958), the Gold Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1961), a MacDowell Medal (1968) and two Pulitzers (a career award in 1974 and for his Concerto for Orchestra in 1982). He received 14 honorary doctorates.

During the course of a 62-year teaching career, Sessions profoundly influenced numerous important students. They include Babbitt, Larry Bell, Cone, Maxwell Davies, DeVoto, Del Tredici, Diamond, Eaton, Lehman Engel, Vivian Fine, Joel Feigin, Kenneth Frazelle, Gideon, Harbison, Imbrie, Earl Kim, Kirchner, Machover, Mambk, Martino, Nancarrow, Newlin, Rzewski, Salzman, Harold Schiffman, Tsontakis, Weisgall and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. Sessions published four books and numerous essays (collected in a fifth), including articles on theories by Krenek, Schenker and Hindemith. His teaching, academic honours and writings led critics to describe Sessions as an ‘academic’ composer, a charge he denied but did not escape.

Sessions, Roger

2. Works.

Having been a child prodigy, Sessions felt that he developed unevenly as an adult, the length of his creative life and the pattern of his compositional career paralleled by few others. Remarkably, the bulk of his work was written after 1950, his most productive period being from 60 to 85, at which age he won his second Pulitzer Prize. His reputation rests on nine symphonies, three piano sonatas, four concertos, two quartets and a string quintet, two operas, and four orchestral works with voices. The output is notably lacking in minor or occasional pieces, but though he is considered mainly a symphonic composer, Sessions may eventually be equally regarded for his almost as extensive body of vocal music. Excluding juvenilia, Sessions's 42 pieces can be divided into five creative periods, delineated sometimes by a change of place of residence and often by large, frequently vocal, works. Nothing from the juvenilia and his work with Parker or Bloch is published except a suite version (1928) of the 1923 The Black Maskers incidental music. This somewhat expressionistic work, written under Stravinsky's influence, remains, however, the composer's best-known piece.

(i) 1924–35.

The impact on Sessions of living in Europe until 1933 was enormous, but did not result in the production of much music. The only important works from this period are the First Symphony (1926–7), the Piano Sonata (1927–30) and the Violin Concerto (1930–35). His habit of procrastination and slow pace of composition frustrated early supporters such as Copland and Koussevitzky, who gave the première of the First Symphony with the Boston SO in 1927, the only Sessions work performed by him. The tonal Symphony may be described as neo-classical, but his own stylistic traits are also clearly in evidence: long phrases, dense polyphonic accompaniments, dissonance, colourful orchestration, and highly contrapuntal and rhythmically complex textures. The Violin Concerto, which took eight years to complete, marked a turning point, Sessions juxtaposing in it extremes of violence and lyricism. But its technical difficulty, seen by its début performer as insurmountable, gave it an unwarranted reputation as unplayable.

(ii) 1936–47.

Sessions, the internationalist, did not believe in cultivating ‘Americanism’ in music, a position at odds with that of Copland. His Americanness revealed itself in more subtle ways; for example, despite his multi-lingual abilities, he only set English (including Whitman twice), and the pitch and rhythmic inflections are in accord with American accentuation. Important pieces from this time include the String Quartet no.1 (1936), Duo for violin and piano (1942), and the Second Symphony (1944–6) and the Second Piano Sonata (1946). The largest and most impressive work of the period is the one-act, 13-scene opera on Brecht's radio play, The Trial of Lucullus (1947). Written unusually quickly, for a student production at Berkeley, this effective, dramatic and lyrical opera has to date been produced only four times (besides Berkeley, at Princeton, Northwestern and Juilliard), and has been neither published nor recorded. Copyright problems with the Brecht estate have prevented one of Sessions's greatest works from being more widely disseminated.

(iii) 1948–63.

The Trial of Lucullus paved the way for his magnum opus, Montezuma, which he had already begun in the mid-30s and which underlies this entire period. The libretto, by the Sicilian Antonio Borgese, about the conquest of Mexico, was reduced by Sessions from four acts to three after Borgese's death in 1952. But it has still been criticized for an over-elaborate nature: it uses a narrator, alternates prose with rhymed iambic and trochaic couplets, omits many articles and pronouns, inverts normal word order and incorporates Aztec, Spanish and Latin. Sessions felt the story was similar to The Trial of Lucullus, illustrating the futility of conquest; as well as being fascinating on an historical level, the action displays rich pageantry and an array of powerful emotions. The musical response shows him at his most passionate, with a large, colourful orchestra dominating the opera. Ostinatos underline scenes of conspiracy and violent death, and exotic percussion instruments lend a Mexican flavour, while the dry, rasping sound of Sprechstimme is used at times as a literal illustration of the words. The two most memorable moments – the meeting of Cortez and Montezuma, and the human sacrifice – are relayed in tableau, the stage picture matched by a lush, vivid music. As an opera composer and in writing for the voice, Sessions was a Verdian rather than a Wagnerian (despite the almost Wagnerian orchestration). He venerated Verdi's music and devoted full semesters to teaching Falstaff. Originally produced in German (in Berlin), Montezuma was not given its American première until 1976, the New York première following in 1982.

At the beginning of the 1950s, in part inspired by a growing friendship with Schoenberg, Sessions gradually adopted the 12-note method, beginning with the String Quartet no.2 (1950–51) and then the Violin Sonata (1953), in which 12-note organization was unconsciously incorporated. But the large-scale Idyll of Theocritus for soprano and orchestra (1954), which uses two refrains and graphic musical climaxes to tell its love story, demonstrates that his approach was not as rigorous as that of its dedicatee, Dallapiccola, or as Schoenberg's. The fact that the music he had already composed for Montezuma by that time did not have to be revised shows how little such a change of technique affected his well-formed individual style. Though he continually downplayed its use – never writing about it and remarking, ‘the music is God; the 12-tone system is just parish priest’ – the new method, nevertheless, seemed to free him compositionally. Productivity increased despite teaching commitments, and the Piano Concerto (1955–6), Third Symphony (1957), String Quintet (1957–8), Fourth Symphony (1958) and Divertimento for orchestra (1959–60) flowed from his pen in what was for him rapid succession, meeting with success.

(iv) 1963–70.

After Montezuma came Sessions's most prolific period. He produced Psalm 140 for soprano and orchestra (1963), the Fifth Symphony (1964), the Third Piano Sonata (1964–5), the Sixth (1966), Seventh (1966–7) and Eighth (1968) symphonies, and a Rhapsody for Orchestra (1970). The latter three symphonies can be viewed as a trilogy dealing with Sessions's reactions to the Vietnam War.

(v) 1970–81.

Again, a large vocal work delineates a new era in Sessions's music. The last decade of composition was inaugurated by his masterpiece When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (1964–70), dedicated to the memory of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, both assassinated while Sessions was working on the piece. Based on Whitman's poem, the work is scored for three soloists – soprano, contralto and baritone – mixed chorus and orchestra (see fig.2). During this period Sessions also wrote a Double Concerto for violin and cello (1970–71), a Concertino for chamber orchestra (1971–2), Three Choruses on Biblical Texts (1971–2), the Ninth Symphony (1975–8) and the Concerto for Orchestra (1981). The pace of composition slowed. Nevertheless, at the age of 80, Sessions optimistically began work on a third opera, The Emperor's New Clothes (to a libretto by Andrew Porter). That this would have been a comedy paralleled Falstaff, also a product of an octogenarian.

Long revered by students, musicians and other composers, Sessions has not yet been accepted by the public. This is partly because his music, to quote his friend Casella, was ‘born difficult’. Recordings have been slow in coming: not until 1996 were all nine symphonies available, while of the ten vocal works and operas only Lilacs is commercially recorded. His lofty personality, New England upbringing and idealism would not allow him to engineer – much less pay for – performances or recordings. Such indifference doubtless hindered his career. Fortunately, he possessed infinite patience, a knowledge of music history, a sense of humour and the self-confidence to wait for larger acceptance. These qualities were repaid in part when in 1988 the Roger Sessions Society, Inc. was formed to promulgate his music. His centennial year celebrations included performances by the New York PO and broadcasts by the BBC. After his death, Andrew Porter wrote of him, ‘For music, he embodied what is finest in American thought, character, and genius. In nine symphonies, in concertos, two operas, and many other works, he gave it utterance. He was one of the country's – and the world's – great men’ (1985).

Sessions, Roger

WORKS

all published unless otherwise stated

stage

orchestral

vocal

chamber

keyboard

Sessions, Roger

WRITINGS

The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener (Princeton, NJ, 1950, 2/1962)

Harmonic Practice (New York, 1951)

Reflections on the Music Life in the United States (New York, 1956)

Questions about Music (Cambridge, MA, 1970/R)

ed. E.T. Cone: Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays (Princeton, NJ, 1979)

Many articles for MM, Harvard Musical Review, and other periodicals

Sessions, Roger

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

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P. Rosenfeld: ‘Roger Sessions’, Port of New York (New York, 1924), 145–52

R.D. Welch: ‘A Symphony Introduces Roger Sessions’, MM, iv/4 (1926–7), 27–30

A. Copland: ‘Contemporaries at Oxford, 1931’, MM, ix (1931–2), 22–3

M. Brunswick: ‘American Composers, X: Roger Huntington Sessions’, MM, x (1932–3), 182–7

A. Copland: Our New Music (New York, 1941, enlarged 2/1968 as The New Music 1900–1960)

M.A. Schubart: ‘Roger Sessions: Portrait of an American Composer’, MQ, xxxii (1946), 196–214

D. Diamond: ‘Roger Sessions: Symphony No.2’, Notes, vii (1949–50), 438–9

E.T. Cone: ‘Sessions: Second String Quartet’, MQ, xliii (1957), 140–41

A. Imbrie: ‘Current Chronicle’, MQ, xliv (1958), 370–71

E. Carter: ‘Current Chronicle’, MQ, xlv (1959), 375–81

B. Boretz: ‘Current Chronicle’, MQ, xlvii (1961), 386–93

E.T. Cone and F. Rounds: ‘The Reminiscences of Roger Sessions’ (US-NYcu, Oral History Collection 1962) [2 vols. of transcripts of interviews]

A. Imbrie: ‘Roger Sessions: in Honor of his Sixty-Fifth Birthday’, PNM, i/1 (1962–3), 117–47; repr. in Perspectives on American Composers, eds. B. Boretz and E.T. Cone (New York, 1971)

P.M. Davies: ‘Montezuma’, New York Times (21 April 1964)

E. Schweitzer: Generation in String Quartets of Carter, Sessions, Kirchner, and Schuller (diss., Eastman School, 1965)

E.T. Cone: ‘Conversation with Roger Sessions’, PNM, iv/2 (1965–6), 29–46; repr. in Perspectives on American Composers, eds. B. Boretz and E.T. Cone (New York, 1971), 90–107

E.C. Laufer: ‘Roger Sessions: Montezuma’, PNM, iv/1 (1965–6), 95–108

R. Cogan: ‘Toward a Theory of Timbre: Verbal Timbre and Musical Line in Purcell, Sessions, and Stravinsky’, PNM, viii/1 (1969–70), 75–81

H. Weinberg and P. Petrobelli: ‘Roger Sessions e la musica americana’, NRMI, v (1971), 249–63

E.T. Cone: ‘In Honor of Roger Sessions’, PNM, x/2 (1971–2), 130–41

A. Imbrie: ‘The Symphonies of Roger Sessions’, Tempo, no.103 (1972), 24–32

R. Henderson: Tonality in the Pre-serial Instrumental Music of Roger Sessions (diss., Eastman School, 1974)

A. Olmstead: ‘Interviews with Roger Sessions’, American Music Oral History Project (Yale U. Library, 1974–80) [includes transcripts]

‘Sessions, Roger (Huntington)’, CBY 1975

E.T. Cone: ‘In Defense of Song: the Contribution of Roger Sessions’, Critical Inquiry, ii (1975–6), 93–112

E.T. Cone: ‘Sessions's Concertino’, Tempo, no.115 (1975–6), 2–10

J. Harbison: ‘Roger Sessions and Montezuma’, New Boston Review, ii/1 (1976), 5; repr. in Tempo, no.121 (1977), 2–5

A. Porter: ‘The Matter of Mexico’, New Yorker (19 April 1976), 115

A. Porter: ‘An American Requiem’, New Yorker (16 May 1977), 133

A. Olmstead: ‘Roger Sessions: a Personal Portrait’, Tempo, no.127 (1978), 10–16

A. Porter: ‘Sessions’ Passionate and Profound Lilacs’, High Fidelity, xxviii/2 (1978), 70–71

P. Rapoport: ‘Roger Sessions: a Discography’, Tempo, no.127 (1978), 17–20

D.R. Duflin: The Interpretation of Accent Signs in Roger Sessions’ Third Piano Sonata (diss., Ohio State U., 1979)

C.J. Oja: ‘The Copland-Sessions Concerts and their Reception in the Contemporary Press’, MQ, lxv (1979), 212–29

D. Burge: ‘Contemporary Piano: Piano Music of Roger Sessions’, Contemporary Keyboard, vi/10 (1980), 61

A. Olmstead: ‘Roger Sessions's Ninth Symphony’, Tempo, no.133 (1980), 79–81

G.R. Danchenka: Quantitative Measurement of Information Content via Recurring Associations in Three Movements of Symphony No.2 by Roger Sessions (diss., U. of Miami, 1981)

H. Gleason and W. Becker: ‘Roger Sessions’, 20th-Century American Composers, Music Literature Outlines, ser. iv (Bloomington, IN, 2/1981), 185 [incl. further bibliography]

M.J. Merryman: Aspects of Phrasing and Pitch Usage in Roger Sessions's Piano Sonata No.3 (diss., Brandeis U., 1981)

A. Olmstead: ‘Roger Sessions on Music: Collected Essays’, PNM, xix/2 (1981), 491–500

A. Porter: ‘Celebration’, New Yorker (9 Nov 1981), 164–7

M.I. Campbell: The Piano Sonatas of Roger Sessions: Sequel to a Tradition (diss., Peabody Institute, 1982)

C. Gagne and T. Caras: ‘Roger Sessions’, Soundpieces: Interviews with American Composers (Metuchen, NJ, 1982), 355–65

S.M. Kress: Roger Sessions, Composer and Teacher: A Comparative Analysis of Roger Sessions's Philosophy of Educating Composers and his Approach to Composition in Symphonies No.2 and 8 (diss., U. of Florida, 1982)

C.N. Mason: A Comprehensive Analysis of Roger Sessions' Opera Montezuma (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana, 1982)

A. Porter: ‘The Magnificent Epic’, New Yorker (8 March 1982), 128–37

R.M. Meckna: The Rise of the American Composer-Critic: Aaron Copland, Roger Sessions, Virgil Thomson, and Elliott Carter in the Periodical ‘Modern Music’, 1924–1946 (diss., U. of California, Santa Barbara, 1984)

S. Wheeler: Harmonic Motion in the Music of Roger Sessions: an Examination of the Quintet, First Movement (diss., Brandeis U., 1984)

B.L. Gorelick: Movement and Shape in the Choral Music of Roger Sessions (diss., U. of Illinois, Urbana, 1985)

D. Henahan: Obituary, New York Times (18 March 1985), 1

M. Meckna: ‘Copland, Sessions, and Modern Music: The Rise of the Composer-critic in America’, American Music, iii/2 (1985), 198–204

A. Olmstead: ‘The Plum'd Serpent: Antonio Borgese's and Roger Sessions's Montezuma’, Tempo, no.152 (1985), 12–22

0A. Olmstead: ‘Roger Sessions and his Influence’, Essays on Modern Music, ii (1985), 23–6

A. Olmstead: Roger Sessions and his Music (Ann Arbor, 1985) [incl. bibliography, discography, MSS sources, list of works]

A. Porter: ‘Musical Events’, New Yorker (8 April 1985)

‘In Memoriam Roger Sessions (1896–1985)’, PNM, xxiii/2 (1985), 110–65

A. Olmstead and others: ‘An Appreciation: Roger Sessions, 1896–1985’, Kent Quarterly, v/2 (1986) [entire issue]

E. Carter: ‘Roger Sessions: a Commemorative Tribute’, Tempo, no.156 (1986), 4–6

A. Olmstead: Conversations with Roger Sessions (Boston, 1987)

A. Kozinn: ‘Seeking a Broader Audience for Roger Sessions’, New York Times (13 Nov 1988), 25

M. Nott: ‘Roger Sessions's Fugal Studies with Ernest Bloch: a Glimpse into the Workshop’, American Music, vii/3 (1989), 245–59

A. Campbell: Roger Sessions's Adoption of the Twelve-tone Method (diss., City U. of New York, 1990)

A. Olmstead: ‘The Correspondence between Arnold Schoenberg and Roger Sessions’, Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute, xiii/1 (1990), 47–62

A. Olmstead: ‘The Copland-Sessions Letters’, Tempo, no.175 (1990), 2–5

R. Aldag: Roger Sessions's Duo for Violin and Violoncello: an Edition and an Examination of the Compositional Process (diss., City U. of New York, 1991)

S. Chapin: The Tin Box Collection: Letters of Roger Sessions and His Family and Friends [to 1925] (privately printed, 1992)

A. Olmstead: The Correspondence of Roger Sessions (Boston, 1992)

J. Lochhead: ‘Temporal Processes of Form: Sessions's Third Piano Sonata’, Contemporary Music Review, vii/2 (1993), 163–83

G. Tsontakis: ‘Primary Sources’, MQ, lxxvii (1993), 769–80

D. McDonnell: Roger Sessions's Symphony No.3, first movement: Form, Hexachordal Polarity, and Harmonic Language (diss., Brandeis U., 1994)

W. Pfaff: An Analysis of Cadence Formulation in the “Introduction” of Roger Sessions's Cantata When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (diss., Brandeis U., 1994)

A. Scotto: Exploring the Macrocosm in the Microcosm: an Examination of Two Piano Works by Roger Sessions (diss., U. of Washington, 1995)

J. Lochhead: ‘A Question of Technique: The Second and Third Piano Sonatas of Roger Sessions’, JM, xiv (1996), 544–78