Roger Sessions

Roger Sessions
Portrait of Sessions by Harold Weston (c. 1920s)
Born(1896-12-28)December 28, 1896
DiedMarch 6, 1985(1985-03-06) (aged 88)
EducationHarvard University, Yale University
Occupations
Spouses
Barbara Foster
(m. 1920; div. 1936)
Sarah Elizabeth Frank
(m. 1936)
Children2

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.