WESTSIDER ROGER SESSIONS
Composer of the future
2-10-79
The story of Western music, from the baroque era to the present day, has been written largely by men whose contributions to their art were underappreciated during their own lifetimes. Serious music has a tendency to be ahead of its time, and must wait for the public taste to catch up before it can be accepted.
Such is the case with Roger Sessions. For at least 50 years he has been considered by the American academic establishment to be one of the most gifted and original composers of his generation. But his work has started to gain wide recognition with the general public only since the early 1960s. Today, at 82, he is comfortable in his role as the elder statesman of American concert music. Although relatively few of his works have been recorded — they place extraordinary demands on both performer and listener — Sessions continues to write music with practically unabated energy. His most significant official honor came in 1974, when the Pulitzer Prize Committee issued a special citation naming him "one of the most musical composers of the century."
Since his early 20s, Session has led a dual career as a composer and a teacher of music theory. A former professor at both the University of California, Berkeley, and Princeton University, he has published several books on his musical ideas, and now teaches two days a week at the Juilliard School at Lincoln Center. When I heard that his piano sonatas were going to be performed soon on West 57th Street, I called him to request an interview, and he promptly concurred. We met for lunch at La Crepe on Broadway, and over the meal Sessions revealed himself to be a man of wit, humility, and charm.
Speaking of his piano sonatas, which will be performed at Carnegie Recital Hall in February, March and April, Sessions commented in his slow, precise manner of speech that "the first one was composed in 1930, the second one was composed in '46, and the third one was composed in '65. One sonata will be performed on each program. … I have heard the young lady play one of them. She's going to come and play for me today. I'm helping her to prepare them. Because they're difficult and they take a lot of practice. Her name is Miss Rebecca la Becque. I just laid eyes on her for the first time last week."
Nearly half of his works have been composed in the last 20 years; some are quite melodic; others are so atonal and eery that to some people they suggest the rhythm of the universe itself, or music from the stars. One remarkable aspect of his compositions is that no two are even vaguely alike; another is that they come in so many different instrumental combinations. Besides his piano works, he has composed for violin, organ, cello, chorus and solo voice. In addition, there are his string quartets, his rhapsodies, his nine symphonies, and Montezuma, one of the most distinguished operas ever written by an American.
Why write in so many forms? "You might say I'm paid to," he explained, ordering a second espresso and lighting his pipe. "Generally when I write a big work, it's for a specific purpose." His eighth symphony, for example, was written for the New York Philharmonic to commemorate the orchestra's 125th anniversary.
When I asked Sessions whether he was concerned that most of his works are not available on albums, he said calmly, "I never have tried to get my works recorded or performed. I decided years ago that people would have to come to me; I wasn't coming to them. Things move a little more slowly that way, but one knows that everything one gets is perfectly genuine. … When I wrote my first symphony, Otto Klemperer said he wouldn't dare to conduct it. So I conducted it myself. It would be easy nowadays. Even the Princeton student orchestra played it a few years ago and didn't do too badly. Orchestra players get used to the idiom and people get used to listening. … The only thing is," he added with a chuckle, "I keep getting ahead in that respect."
He was born in Brooklyn in 1896 and moved to Massachusetts at age 3, but Sessions noted that "I do have some memories of the inside of the house." He wrote his first opera at 13 and graduated from Harvard at 18. >From 1925 until 1933 he lived in Italy and Germany, supported by scholarships. Shortly after Hitler came to power, he returned to the U.S., and not long afterward joined the faculty at Princeton, where he remained until 1946. Then he taught at the University of California at Berkeley for eight years before returning to Princeton, where he remained until his mandatory retirement in 1965. Since that time he has taught at Juilliard. He and his wife Elizabeth have been married for 42 years; they have two children and two grandchildren. Said the composer: "I learned that I had a grandson just a few hours after I'd gotten the citation from the Pulitzer Prize Committee, and the grandson was much more exciting — with all due respect."
A resident of Princeton, New Jersey except for the one night each week that he spends on the West Side, Sessions is now eagerly awaiting the performance of his ninth symphony. It was completed in October and will be premiered in Syracuse shortly.
In his Princeton study he is kept constantly busy composing new works, writing letters and correcting proofs. "I don't have any hobbies," he remarked at the end of the interview. "I like good books, but I don't get much time to read them. If I go a few days without composing, I start to feel a little bit depressed."