Roger Sessions on Music : Collected Essays

Description

Over the past fifty years Roger Sessions has developed, in articles, lectures, and addresses, various themes that reflect the stages of his own musical and intellectual growth. These themes form the basis of the present collection of essays. Many of the essays deal with specific problems that musicians, especially composers, have faced during the past five decades: problems related to new musical styles and techniques, to the position of composers in society, to their responsibilities as teachers, to their role during the period of the world wars, to the mutual reactions of composer and audience, and to the basic questions of musical form and expression. The collection also includes a set of critical essays on such seminal figures as Bloch, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky. Roger Sessions is the composer of a recently recorded cantata on Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" as well as numerous other works. He is the author of The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, and Listener (Princeton). Originally published in 1979. Cover Contents Editor's Note Preface I. The Composer's Craft II. The Composer and His Audience III. Education and Training IV. The Limits of Theory V. Music and the World Confiict VI. Five Composers