Roger Sessions | |
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![]() Portrait of Sessions by Harold Weston (c. 1920s) | |
Born | New York, New York, U.S. | December 28, 1896
Died | March 6, 1985 Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. | (aged 88)
Education | Harvard University, Yale University |
Occupations | |
Spouses | Barbara Foster
(m. 1920; div. 1936)Sarah Elizabeth Frank
(m. 1936) |
Children | 2 |
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.