Roger Sessions

Roger Sessions (1896-1985) was one of the most important American composers and educators of the 20th century, though his intensely complex music did not always find a receptive audience. Well-practiced in all the musical idioms of his time, Sessions eventually settled on composing in a modified serial style, and most of his mature works feature a blending of twelve tone techniques with free atonal and tonal elements. The author of a Violin Concerto, a Piano Concerto, nine symphonies, the opera Montezuma, and numerous other works, Sessions won the Pulitzer Prize in 1982 for his Concerto for Orchestra, his last major composition.