Conversations with Roger Sessions

A close friend and colleague of the composer, Andrea Olmstead interviewed Sessions on a weekly basis between 1974 and 1980. Their conversations are delightfully informal and return repeatedly to the subtle ways in which his work has been shaped by personal experience, musical conviction, and the social and political climate of the twentieth century. With urban good humor and occasional irreverence, Sessions discusses his compositions and describes in detail their genesis and development. He also reaffirms his humanistic approach to the music and speaks forthrightly against excessively abstract theoretical approaches. "Just remember," he responds to a question concerning the 12-tone system, "The music is God and the twelve-tone technique is just a parish priest." Sessions also touches on the world of professional music, and on his relations with such luminaries as Arnold Schoenberg, Ernest Bloch, Otto Klemperer, Nadia Boulanger, and Igor Stravinsky. He proves himself here to be a superb raconteur whose charming anecdotes consistently surprise and instruct. Sessions tells us, for instance, how his misreading of a poem by James Joyce led to a piece for solo soprano--and an embarrassing encounter with the great writer's daughter-in-law. He also comments wryly on the critical reception of his more controversial works; in another instance he describes an unlikely fistfight between Sarah Caldwell's mother and an unsympathetic concertgoer at the world premiere of Montezuma. Thanks to Andrea Olmstead's skills as an interviewer and editor, Conversations with Roger Sessions can be enjoyed by professional musicians as well as the layman. It is a very special memorial to this singular composer.