Roger Sessions: Biographical Sketch
	
	
		Roger Sessions' family background was described by his mother, 
Ruth Huntington Sessions, as an odd blend of New England conservatism 
with a recurring strain of quite inconsonant radical leanings. For nearly 
three hundred years before his birth, Roger's forebears were farmers, 
clergymen, lawyers, soldiers, kin and neighbors in the heartland of New 
England. The Phelps', the Porters', the Huntingtons and the Sessions' 
came to western Massachusetts in the early seventeenth century.
		His parents, Archibald Sessions and Ruth Huntington, were married 
in November of 1887 and Roger was born on December 28, 1896, in Brooklyn, 
New York, right before the Spanish American War. Neighbors called him the 
singing baby, as he sang long before he could talk. He was very sharp, 
imitating what he heard with increasing accuracy. Sessions grew up in 
Hadley and Northampton, Massachusetts. His mother kept a boarding house 
at Smith College in Northampton and his father pursued literary interests 
after an unsuccessful law career. Although his parents never divorced, 
they were separated, Ruth in Northampton and Archibald in New York.
		Growing up, Roger had every opportunity for musical exploration. 
His mother played the piano, which he discovered in autumn of 1899. She 
reported that he would strike one key at a time, listening to its last 
vibrations before moving on to the next. Never attempting tunes, Roger 
simply enjoyed one note at a time. He was taken to his first symphony 
concert at the Brooklyn Academy. From a proscenium box, Roger was 
completely absorbed with the production, especially with the conductor, 
whom he imitated faithfully until the end of the concert.
		At the age of nine, Roger was sent to boarding school, or rather 
a succession of boarding schools. His first was the Cloyne School in 
Newport, Rhode Island. Later, he transferred to the Kingsley School in 
Essex Falls, New Jersey. From fall of 1908 to the spring of 1911, Roger 
attended the Kent school in northern Connecticut. It was during one of 
his summers there that Roger realized he was whistling his own tunes 
with such pleasure that he decided to preserve them. He had begun piano 
lessons with the organists of the Episcopal Church in Northampton and 
eventually studied with his mother. His lessons were interrupted when he 
entered Cloyne and resumed at Kingsley and Kent, but he was never really 
enthused in anything more than listening. At Kent he descried a career 
for himself in the field of music. One summer between semesters at Kent, 
Roger was taken to performances of Die Meistersinger and Carmen. Wagner 
in particular captured his interest and imagination. He immediately 
started searching for an opera subject that suited his musical ideas. 
Compiling his own libretto from Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Roger set 
to work on Lancelot and Elaine. In December of 1910, just shy of his 
fourteenth birthday, the work was completed, his very first composition, 
an opera in three acts. At the opening of the 1911-12 academic year, 
Roger, age fourteen, was accepted as a music student at Harvard University.
	At Harvard, Sessions studied composition with Edward Burlingham Hill 
and became editor and president of the Harvard Musical Review by the end 
of 1913. Upon graduation in 1915, Sessions was advised to study with Ravel, 
which was impossible due to Ravel's involvement in the efforts of WWI. 
Instead, he stayed on home soil and entered graduate studies with Horatio 
Parker at Yale. At his graduation in 1917, Sessions was a pacifist in the 
midst of martial fever surrounding the war. Sessions was arrested in July 
of 1917 for distributing anti-conscription literature. By April of 1918 he 
had changed his mind and actually tried to enlist, only to be denied 
because of his poor eyesight. Sessions' views on American involvement in 
world conflicts were shifted to support, especially with WWII.
		Sessions' first job, back home at Smith College in Northampton, was 
accompanied by frustrations concerning the development of his musical ideas. 
He blamed his former teachers for not furnishing him with the skills he 
needed. He decided to turn to a composer whose background contrasted 
American establishment at the time, Ernest Bloch. Sessions studied with 
Bloch for two years, later following him to a post at the Cleveland 
Institute, a school of music that Bloch developed and built from the 
ground.
		In 1923, Sessions embarked on the first of many trips to Europe. 
Funded by his father, the trip was, for Sessions, a cultural tour. He made 
contact with Nadia Boulanger, but was not there to study, as was a trend in 
the development of many young American composers in the early twentieth 
century. Sessions loved Europe and returned there from 1925-1928 under the 
auspice of Bernard Berenson. At Berenson's villa, just outside Florence, 
Italy, Sessions was free to write. He was not obligated to teach and was 
stimulated by the artists that frequented Berenson's "intelligencia colony." 
It was there that Sessions composed his First Symphony (1927), dedicated to 
his father, who died in 1926.
		While in Italy, Sessions traveled and made important friends and 
professional allies, especially within the "Boulangerie." However, he was 
apprehensive about subjecting himself to the authority of another, even 
Boulanger. The pressure of commitment threatened his independence as a 
composer. He remained independent throughout his life, though his 
influences were welcomed and acknowledged, firstly Stravinsky and Bloch.
		It was in his visits to Paris that Sessions met Aaron Copland. 
Copland was to become an important figure in his life and career. He 
benefited Sessions by promoting and publishing his music as well as 
recommending him for various jobs and grants. The two developed a lasting 
professional and personal relationship. The Copland/Sessions Concerts of 
Contemporary Music (1928-1931), a direct link between the two, was a 
series of eight concerts held in New York and aimed at the promotion of 
new music, especially that of young composers. Regarding the concerts and 
their production, Sessions was to be of no practical assistance whatever 
in their organization. This became clear and frustrating to Copland, who 
was solely responsible for raising funds, renting halls, publicity, as 
well as finding music and performers. Sessions did little more than lend 
his name and suggest program material.
		Sessions' European residences included Florence (1925-28), Rome 
(1929-1931), and Berlin (1931-33). Of the most influential and meaningful 
of his experiences in Europe were those involving political currents. The 
Fascist and Nazi movements in Italy and Germany respectively had 
significant effects on Sessions' views of art and its place in society. 
The views he developed as a result of first hand experiences with the 
political pressures in Italy and Germany foreshadowed those of his own 
country. Sessions was independent as a composer and felt that art should 
be independent of any type of national mold or agenda. This was a direct 
influence on his rejection of certain "schools" of music that developed 
in the United States during the twenties and thirties.
		Returning to the United States, Sessions was accompanied by an 
exodus of Germany's cultural elite. What he had loved most about Europe 
was joining him on home soil. However, Sessions found it difficult to fit 
into American musical life in 1933. Europeans regarded him as an American 
composer and Americans thought of him as a European composer. He was caught 
in the middle. As a composer, Sessions found American life in the thirties 
difficult at first. The same could be said of his search for a job. 
However, by 1935 he had secured a position at Princeton University, which 
he held until 1945. Thereafter, Sessions was to play an important role in 
the development of American university music schools over the last two 
thirds of the twentieth century. Before the thirties, music schools cast a 
relatively small lot in universities across the country. From 1945 to 1953, 
Sessions took up a position at U.C. Berkeley. With this development, 
Sessions became a bicoastal influence. He was recognized as a significant 
influence as a composer and educator. His list of students and their 
subsequent accomplishments and careers, serving on various prestigious 
faculties across the United States, is by itself sufficient evidence of his 
role in the development of American music schools. Additional contributions 
include his writings: The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, 
Listener (1950), Harmonic Practice (1951), Reflections on the Music Life in 
the United States (1956), and various essays in Questions About Music (1970) 
and Roger Sessions on Music (1979).
		In California, Sessions was subject to increased exposure of the 
twelve-tone music and techniques of Arnold Schoenberg, who was at UCLA. He 
had already been exposed to it by Ernst Krenek, but Shoenberg and, later, 
Luigi Dallapiccola were integral in his development towards twelve-tone 
composition. Sessions ear had already advanced to the incorporation of all 
possible tones in his musical ideas. There was no need for him to adjust 
his musical ideas and approach to composition in order to accommodate the 
new environment. His ideas were unchanged when incorporated into the twelve-
tone method; they were the basis for the row.
		With his adoption of the twelve-tone method, Sessions creative 
output increased dramatically. He had labored almost half his musical life 
to produce two symphonies, two piano sonatas, one violin concerto, a one-act 
opera, one string quartet, and a few other works. After 1950, Sessions 
produced seven more symphonies, his massive opera Montezuma, one piano 
concerto, a concerto for violin and cello, another string quartet, a string 
quintet, two works for orchestra (Divertimento and Rhapsody), three 
extraordinary cantatas (The Idyll of Theocritus, Psalm 140, and When Lilacs 
Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd), two other vocal works, various chamber works, 
and the Concerto for Orchestra. Sessions must have been forever grateful to 
Schoenberg, Dallapiccola, and other friends who encouraged him to explore 
the possibilities of twelve-tone writing and helped to ease his suspicions 
about something that eventually allowed him to tap into his creative flow.
		Sessions returned to Princeton from 1953-65 and was required to 
retire under Princeton's mandatory age limits. After 1965, he did some 
teaching in Buenos Aires with Alberto Ginastera and his final university 
position was at the Julliard School from 1966-1983. Sessions died at the 
age of 88 on March 17, 1985.
		One of the most dynamic figures in the history of American music, 
Roger Sessions was a man of significant influence as a composer and 
educator. Although his views on nationalism and the role of the artist in 
society sometimes went against the trends in his country, he stayed true to 
himself and gave America all he had to offer. His efforts and influence as 
an educator can be seen in his students and their careers in his footsteps 
as well as his hand in the growth of American music schools during his 
lifetime. As a composer, his contributions to music were substantial and 
added to the cultural diversity that makes America great. His experiences a
s a student, cultural tourist, writer, theorist, composer and educator made 
him who he was. He shared his experiences, opinions, and philosophies with 
his friends, colleagues, and students. These things were a part of him. They 
were his contributions to the twentieth century and the future of music.

Jason Calhoun 4/03