Roger Sessions | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of Sessions by Harold Weston (c. 1920s) | |
| Born | December 28, 1896 New York, New York, U.S. |
| Died | March 6, 1985 (aged 88) Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| 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.