Roger Sessions

1896 - 1985

photo credits: Wikimedia Commons

genre: opera, symphony, classical music

country of citizenship: United States of America

languages spoken, written or signed: English

educated at: Harvard University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, Yale School of Music, Kent School

occupation: classical composer, musicologist, music theorist, university teacher, music critic

award received: Guggenheim Fellowship, Rome Prize, Pulitzer Prize for Music, Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences

student of: Horatio Parker, Ernest Bloch

Roger Huntington Sessions (December 28, 1896 – March 16, 1985) was an American composer, teacher, and writer on music. He had initially started his career writing in a neoclassical style, but gradually moved further towards more complex harmonies and postromanticism, and finally the twelve-tone serialism of the Second Viennese School. Sessions' friendship with Arnold Schoenberg influenced this, but he would modify the technique to develop a unique style involving rows to supply melodic thematic material, while composing the subsidiary parts in a free and dissonant manner. Source: Wikipedia (en)