His Own Thing

"Some composers change their colors constantly," says Conductor William Steinberg. "Sessions writes only music by Sessions. To the end, he is true to his personality, his genius."

To the end, American Symphonist Roger Sessions is going to be a difficult composer for the public to like. At Manhattan's Philharmonic Hall last week, his new Eighth Symphony--masterful in its lyric use of twelve-tone principles, fearless in its glacial austerity--laid one of the big eggs of the season. At the close, few in the audience even realized the work was over; men were caught with their arms folded, women with fingers entwined in their coiffures. Thus surprised, they were able to summon up only enough applause to give Sessions and Conductor Steinberg a single extra bow--far less than the usual polite New York Philharmonic minimum.

The question of audience response is pertinent because it strikes at the heart of the crisis of communication in Sessions' music. He would love nothing better than an audience ovation. But, stubborn New England descendant of Mayflower pilgrims that he is, he refuses to bid for easy success with the latest fashions. For that reason, he has had to settle for the high esteem of colleagues and critics, and the reputation of a Zeus on a cloud-cloaked Olympus doing his own thing, virtually daring the multitudes to like it.

The Eighth Symphony is actually well worth taking up the dare. It shows that Sessions at 71 has completely absorbed the serialistic principles laid down by Arnold Schoenberg, and now uses them with rare freedom, spontaneity and expressivity. His orchestral colors look back to Alban Berg, but he is visionary in the way he creates melody through the interaction of contrapuntal strands and in the way he achieves the proper symphonic contrast of mood without the usual resort to repetition. Just as his earlier music is beginning to find favor today--notably the Violin Concerto--the Eighth will undoubtedly have to wait for its day. Sessions will wait, too. "What can one do about audience psychology?" he asks. "Immediate response is not what one is preoccupied with. The job of the composer is to write the music he loves best. I think that's true of anything anyone does seriously."

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