Roger Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions ( born December 28, 1896 in Brooklyn, New York, † March 16, 1985 in Princeton, New Jersey) was an American composer.

He spent most of his childhood at the headquarters of his family in Hadley, Massachusetts. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendant of Samuel Huntington, which the Declaration of Independence of the United States had co-signed. Sessions early showed an extraordinary intellectual and musical talent. At the age of 14 years was admitted to Harvard University, where he studied with Edward Burlingame Hill. In 1913 he had the first contact with "modern" music by some of Schoenberg's piano pieces and Stravinsky's " Petrouchka ", which made ​​a deep impression on him. After four years at Harvard, he continued to study at Yale, Horatio Parker composition with, followed by education ( with Ernest Bloch ), his assistant at the Cleveland Institute of Music in 1921. At 20 he got his first job as a teacher at Smith College. "The Black Maskers Suite", an oft-heard sessions of work, was composed for a performance at Smith College.

In 1925 began Sessions stay in Europe, the - should be eight years - with interruptions. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Prix de Rome in 1931 and a grant from the Carnegie Foundation. With his wife Barbara, he lived mostly in Florence and Rome, 1931 she moved to Berlin. Sessions also undertook extended trips through Europe and met some of the luminaries of the time, such as Pierre Monteux, Otto Klemperer, and Alban Berg. The written during this period works include the First Piano Sonata, the first symphony and the three organ chorale preludes. A good portion of the Violin Concerto was composed in Europe.

In 1928 he founded with Aaron Copland, the Copland - Sessions concerts, in which the initial performances in New York of works ( among others) by Carlos Chavez, Walter Piston, Henry Cowell, Marc Blitzstein, Leo Ornstein, George Antheil, Paul Bowles and Virgil Thomson were presented.

Sessions left Europe in 1933, shortly after coming to power of the Nazis in Germany and returned to his homeland. A year after his return from Europe, he took on the teaching at Princeton University, which lasted almost continuously 50 years. During his years at Princeton, his reputation as a composer began to develop, and there were several performances of his works. In addition to the completion of the violin concerto to his compositions from this period include the first string quartet, the piano from my diary, the violin - piano duo, and a large part of the second symphony. In 1946, Sessions went to the University of California at Berkeley, where he remained for eight years. In 1965, after his "retirement" from teaching, sessions took up a position as a teacher of composition at the Juilliard School of Music in New York, which he held until 1983, when increasingly on part-time basis.

Sessions created two operas, nine symphonies, concertos, chamber music, and sacred music. Until the 1930s, he wrote in neo- classical style, after 1950 he turned also to the twelve-tone music. His Second Piano Sonata from 1946 is completely atonal. Most of his music he wrote between 50 and 75 years of age. The list includes, among others, six of his nine symphonies, the String Quintet, the second and third piano sonatas and his magnum opus, the opera " Montezuma ". Sessions worked on the composition of this opera for 25 years. The premiere of this work in the staging of Gustav Rudolf Sellner took place at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 19th April 1964.

During his 50 - year career as a teacher taught sessions at Princeton University, the University of California at Berkeley and at the Juilliard School. His students included Milton Babbitt, David Diamond, Leon Kirchner, Ralph Shapey, Eric Salzman, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, George Tsontakis, Andrew Imbrie and Hugo Weisgall.

Roger Sessions was one of the leading American composers of the 20th century. His published works include the full spectrum of genres from symphonies, chamber music, opera and solo piano music. Many leading orchestras and soloists gave him works in order and he was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

Works

• Overview of his works at Theodore Presser Music Publishers
• Ode To Gravity: Early Music of Roger Sessions ( audio)
• Rehearsal of Roger Sessions ' String Quartet No.. 2 - The Griller String Quartet ( October 18, 1953)

Prizes and Awards (selection)

Publications Sessions

• Roger Sessions on Music; Collected Essays. Ed. Edward T. Cone. Princeton University Press
• Questions About Music. Harvard University Press; W. W. Norton & Co.
• The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, Listener. Princeton University Press; Antheneum
• Harmonic Practice. Publisher: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1951