# Roger Sessions



## brotagonist

I was exposed to some of Roger Sessions' symphonies earlier this year, but I wasn't ready for them at that time. They had seemed to me quite Schoenbergian (a plus), but I had also thought they lacked Schoenberg's flowing 'schwungvoll' style (a minus), making the 12-tone system sound unnecessarily harsh to the ear. It could have just been the particular recording (of the 3rd Symphony, if I recall correctly), as I have now completely changed my mind 

I spent the last week or so traversing all of Sessions' 9 Symphonies. With the exception of the early First Symphony, which is not Schoenbergian at all and seems to me to be rather generic in style, I now see Sessions as the just inheritor of the New Viennese School (NVS) style. It is as if he had listened to the works of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg and ventured out on those tantalizing leads that they hadn't in order to create the opus of symphonies that NVS fans have longed for. I know that I will spend some time in familiarizing myself with this fascinating music.

It is a shame that there are so few available recordings of his music and the few there are are mostly out of print


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## cjvinthechair

Have a few of his works somewhere, but haven't listened much - will use this as a reminder to try him....& maybe get back to you !?


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## PetrB

From Wiki:
"His works written up to 1930 or so are more or less neoclassical in style. Those written between 1930 and 1940 are more or less tonal but harmonically complex. The works from 1946 on are atonal, and beginning with the Solo Violin Sonata of 1953, serial."

His stylistic progression, then was more step-by-step toward the serial, and I believe this somewhat accounts for the readier fluidity, and expressiveness, of this American's serial works compared to many a later American composer who 'hopped on the serial bandwagon' more abruptly from whatever way they had been writing.

I think you might like to also become acquainted with Sessions' very much earlier (and pre-serial) _Black Masker's Suite, (1928),_ incidental music for a play first written for a chamber ensemble, and five years later re-done as this suite for full orchestra:









Violin Concerto (1935)





Piano Concerto (1956)





[P.s. I recommend also George Rochberg, who composed tonal, transited to serial, later dropped it, or mixed the two approaches in a synthesis -- another for whom 'it was just another way to write, and whose works are pretty consistently worth a listen. His _Violin Concerto_ uses both serial and non-serial means.]


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## Manxfeeder

I've gone through Sessions' symphonies a few times. I remember feeling like there was something compelling about them but also feeling a sense of frustration, like I wasn't getting them. I'll have to blow the dust off my set and try again.


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## science

How about the Black Maskers Suite?


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## millionrainbows

Sessions' slow movements are always good.

Supposedly, he evolved naturally into a completely chromatic style, which I hesitate to characterize as "Schoenbergian" or "12-tone" or serial. He's modern and chromatic like Elliott Carter is chromatic, and that's not necessarily 12-tone.

In fact, I have to question the entire paradigm of what "12-tone" really means. The "method" was never fully defined, and was a free-for-all, basically. Each composer approached it differently. So, I can't go along with the stereotyping of Sessions as "12-tone" or serial, because nobody fits that stereotype, even Schoenberg.

12-tone method never had any axiomatic principles which really solidified it into a comprehensive, consistent, coherent method (like tonality is) until Milton Babbitt and George Perle started working on it.

So, let's just say that Sessions, and Elliott Carter, are "modern chromaticists," which is not really 12-tone, since 12-tone itself always needed more defining. It's just a language which uses all 12 notes inclusively.

Therefore, the old stereotypes and assumptions simply fall apart upon closer inspection, and we are once again left with the old stand-by axiom, "Either you like it or you don't."

Sessions' music is certainly well-crafted, but perhaps his greatest failing is that he was an isolationist, was somewhat detached from the larger picture, which might translate for some into a curious sort of opacity, which might be interpreted as a lack of desire to communicate. The same thing might be said of Elliott Carter, though, but I think it's a misreading. Milton Babbitt certainly connected with me upon my first hearing of his _Ensembles for Synthesizer._


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## Chordalrock

I found this quotation about Sessions online; it's from Norton's "Twentieth-Century Music" (1991).

"The richness and complexity of Session's music have slowed its public acceptance; performances have been relatively rare and often technically unsatisfactory, owing to the music's uncommon difficulty. Yet both performers and audiences are gradually accustoming themselves to the density of his musical thought. Sessions is arguably the finest symphonist yet produced in the United States, whose large-scale orchestral works deserve a place beside those of the twentieth-century composers, such as Sibelius and Shostakovich, who have contributed most to the preservation and continued evolution of this traditional genre."

I like Sessions best when he is mysterious or dark, and the least when he is violent. This is just a current personal preference, and I wouldn't blame Sessions for wanting to write dramatic music. I'm also a fan of his complex counterpoint - not at all dry - and I wish more composers attempted a synthesis of Renaissance complexity and modern tonal language.


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## brotagonist

I was rather surprised that I had started this thread and that I was so enthusiastic about Sessions' symphonies. I had completely forgotten about him


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