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FEATURE
Letters From A Giant
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By Steve Schwartz
Roger Sessions belongs to a small group of "composers' composers,"
enormously respected inside the charmed circle, and practically unknown
outside it. I'm a modern-music freak, and, excepting early works through the
Violin Concerto of 1935, his music took me a very long time to make sense
of. I don't think it an accident that I actually had to go through the
intense experiences of rehearsal and performance of the late works before
the fog lifted, as it were. I realize that most people don't have the same
opportunities. Sessions, like Schoenberg and Webern, requires a great
performer far more than even Stravinsky, whose textures are generally less
opaque and who frequently presents you with an immediately-exciting surface.
The value of books like "The Correspondence of Roger Sessions," edited by Andrea Olmstead, usually lies in providing a confirmation or a clearer view of a composer you admire. If the music doesn't interest you in the first place, reading the composer's correspondence won't usually awaken that interest. Few composers lead especially interesting lives. Other than the wife-killer Gesualdo or the murder victim Leclair, the lives won't have you turning pages as quickly as the unauthorized Madonna bio. It's also the rare composer who pours histhoughts on art into letters, although he may very likely let fly with a nasty remark on a contemporary or, more rarely, a bit of praise. Letters usually get written to satisfy the demands of living or even getting a living. Discussions about art usually get written down because someone'swilling to pay, although the Internet may have begun to change this, perhaps profoundly.
Anyone who has heard a Sessions work should recognize at least a musician of
uncompromising integrity. Sessions wants to give you only what's good for
you and hopes that it's what you want to hear. If he makes things hard for
the listener, the letters reveal that he made things much harder for
himself. He composed slowly and refused to release what he regarded as
inferior work. Despite good intentions, he repeatedly missed commission
deadlines (sometimes by several years) and antagonized patrons by his
delays, but he stood firm against sending out less than his best. He
disliked the emphasis on modern music and on American music as such, feeling
that every composer sooner or later had to compete with the greats of the
past. He preferred sooner to later. Therefore, he often writes about his
unease with the ghetto of new-music and American-music concerts, while at
the same time he recognizes and deplores the routine and unhealthy
domination of money in our concert life.
The book confirms Sessions's wide reading and deep culture and his desire to
connect to the great Western European artistic tradition. He writes fluently
in several languages, including Italian, German, French, and Russian, as
well as English. He reads great literature in several languages, and
corresponds not only with musicians but with writers as well. He is
comfortable enough with his learning that he never lets it bog him down. The
letters fly.
The big surprises even among at least some people familiar with the
composer's output will probably be the composer's deep romanticism toward
performance and toward the art itself and his impatience with certain
modernist musical trends. He repeatedly wants the "singing line" to come out
in his music, rather than an obsession with details. For him, performers
must absorb the details so that they can get to the music. He talks again
and again about the "psychology" and the spirit of a work.
He praises such unfashionables as Ernest Bloch (although he tempered his early hero-worship, he never lost his admiration completely), Swiss composer Jean Binet, and Roy Harris (whom, incidentally, Sessions also seems to have regarded as an idiot in everything except music), as well as those whom you would expect, like Schoenberg, Krenek, Mahler, and Stravinsky. However the Italian composer Luigi Dallapiccola probably came closest to his own heart, and the two formed a close friendship. Sessions admired not only the music, but the man. The letters back and forth show two extremely erudite men playing with ideas and having a great time. Dallapiccola's sudden death broke Sessions's heart. "I no longer have anyone to talk to," he reportedly said.
There are personal revelations as well as concealments. His divorce from his
first wife, Barbara, comes as a surprise, since the letters to her do not so
much as hint at trouble--not that it's any of our business, of course.
There's also the scoop that Sessions considered himself a connoisseur of
sexual paraphernalia and in Europe took friends on shopping expeditions. His
political commentary, fairly sparse, nevertheless hits the heart of things
in a very original way, from my end of the political spectrum. Here's a
sample from the Johnson-Goldwater campaign:
"Unfortunately the current political situation here is
both critical and dangerous. There is no doubt that
Goldwater represents a very ugly part, unfortunately
not altogether new, of our country. One mustn't speak
of Fascism or even or war but rather of politics that
are not geared toward every probable or immediate
consequences, and of a blind and idiotic simplicity."
"And if certain sporadic and alarmingly
consistent indications which I have recently had are
as significant as I fear they are, Hitler's successes
have already begun to poison influential opinion in
this country, at least to the extent of lending aid--
comfort to a very real--dangerous trend toward
Fascism in the U.S. ... perhaps anyway I am
impatient--even intolerant myself. But I know my
compatriots quite well--am all too aware of what is
at bottom nothing but indolence--passivity
masquerading as good humour--a profound
unwillingness to face unpleasant or even merely
difficult or complicated facts."
I wish there were more.
Andrea Olmstead ranks, I suppose, as the leading Boswell of Sessions, since
she has also published a book of her interviews with him. The editing is
good. Footnotes are helpful. It's a solid job.
Sessions, Roger. The Correspondence of Roger Sessions. Olmstead, Andrea, ed.
Boston: Northeastern University Press. 1992. 539 pp. ISBN 1-55553-122-9
©1998 Steve Schwartz, all rights reserved
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Roger Sessions
Sessions with Ernest Bloch (right) 1923