The Symphony No. 2 of Roger Sessions

Roger Sessions

Roger Huntington Sessions was an American composer, critic, and teacher of music.-Life:Sessions was born in Brooklyn, New York, to a family that could trace its roots back to the American revolution. His mother, Ruth Huntington Sessions, was a direct descendent of Samuel Huntington, a signer of...

 was begun in 1944 and completed in 1946.

It is in four movements

Movement (music)

A movement is a self-contained part of a musical composition or musical form. While individual or selected movements from a composition are sometimes performed separately, a performance of the complete work requires all the movements to be performed in succession...

:

1. Molto agitato - Tranquillo e misterioso (D minor
   D minor
   D minor is a minor scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. In the harmonic minor, the C is raised to C. Its key signature has one flat ....
   
    - all keys are more or less.)
2. Allegretto capriccioso (F minor
   F minor
   F minor is a minor scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. The harmonic minor raises the E to E. Its key signature has four flats ....
   
   )
3. Adagio tranquillo ed espressivo (B-flat minor)
4. Allegramente (D major
   D major
   D major is a major scale based on D, consisting of the pitches D, E, F, G, A, B, and C. Its key signature consists of two sharps. Its relative minor is B minor and its parallel minor is D minor....
   
   )

The symphony is dedicated "To the Memory of Franklin Delano Roosevelt", who died while Sessions was composing the Adagio tranquillo. The score is dated "Princeton-Gambier-Berkeley, 1944-46" - it was begun in Princeton, work continued at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and finished at the University of California

University of California

The University of California is a public university system in the U.S. state of California. Under the California Master Plan for Higher Education, the University of California is a part of the state's three-tier public higher education system, which also includes the California State University...

 at Berkeley

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

.

Though the work was originally commissioned by the Ditson Fund of Columbia University

Columbia University

Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...

, the premiere, under Pierre Monteux

Pierre Monteux

Pierre Monteux was an orchestra conductor. Born in Paris, France, Monteux later became an American citizen.-Life and career:Monteux was born in Paris in 1875. His family was descended from Sephardi Jews who came to France in the wake of the Spanish Inquisition. He studied violin from an early age,...

 and the San Francisco Symphony

San Francisco Symphony

The San Francisco Symphony is an orchestra based in San Francisco, California. Since 1980, the orchestra has performed at the Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall. The San Francisco Symphony Youth Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony Chorus are part of the organization...

, took place 9-11 January 1947 .

Recordings

1. Mitropoulos/NY Philharmonic (Columbia LP, 1950 and CRI CD)
2. Blomstedt/San Francisco Symphony (London CD, 1994)