Violin Concerto (Sessions)
Encyclopedia
Roger Sessions
' Violin Concerto was composed between 1927 and 1935, and is scored for violin and orchestra (without violins).
, in the summer of 1927—although the composer later postdated the beginning of this work to his years at the American Academy in Rome
in 1928 and 1929,—and was completed in 1935. It was originally meant to have been premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra during their 1932–33 season, with Richard Burgin
as soloist, but Sessions did not finish the finale—originally to have been the third movement—in time. Ultimately deciding on a four-movement form, Sessions delivered the violin part to Burgin in the fall of 1934, while still orchestrating the last movement, and Koussevitzky agreed to program the concerto during the first half of the 1935–36 season. When Sessions expressed a preference for a better-known violinist, Burgin graciously stepped aside and Joseph Szigeti
was named as the probable soloist. The Concerto was finally completed in San Francisco in August 1935, and the premiere was scheduled to take place in November 1936, but the now-intended soloist, Albert Spalding
, asked for a postponement and requested that Sessions compose a new finale. Sessions declined and released the violinist of his obligation to perform the concerto. Spalding could not master the violin part, especially the "punishingly fast" tarantella finale, and the performance was cancelled at the last minute. The concerto was finally given its first performance with a professional orchestra by Louis Krasner
and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, on November 14, 1947, though an earlier performance had been given in Chicago on January 8, 1940 by Robert Arthur Gross, the WPA Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Izler Solomon
, and Gross also performed the first two movements in 1941 with the National Youth Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski
.
It is dedicated to Sessions' first wife, Barbara.
The concerto's advocates have included Tossy Spivakovsky
(who gave the New York premiere with Leonard Bernstein
conducting in 1959); more recently, Jorja Fleezanis and Ole Bohn, who has made the work's second recording.
style. It marks the beginning of his characteristic, unique style featuring extended, continuously flowing sections in which ideas surface, gain clarity and definition, and then recede again into the general flow. It is in four movements
:
The first movement opens with two motifs
, a rising diatonic segment in the trombone consisting of the first five notes of the B minor scale, and a more intense, jagged line in the trumpet, in a rapidly rising and falling pattern covering a diminished eleventh. These two figures occur throughout the entire concerto, and serve to unify the whole. The third movement is joined to the finale by a cadenza for the soloist, which employs a sort of metric modulation
in which the violin accelerates through a measure of thirty-seconds to a bridge passage of sextuplet thirty-seconds, entering the finale with a passage equivalent in basic pulse though not in speed with the previous movement.
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...
' Violin Concerto was composed between 1927 and 1935, and is scored for violin and orchestra (without violins).
History
The concerto was begun, at the suggestion of Serge KoussevitzkySerge Koussevitzky
Serge Koussevitzky , was a Russian-born Jewish conductor, composer and double-bassist, known for his long tenure as music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1924 to 1949.-Early career:...
, in the summer of 1927—although the composer later postdated the beginning of this work to his years at the American Academy in Rome
American Academy in Rome
The American Academy in Rome is a research and arts institution located on the Gianicolo in Rome.- History :In 1893, a group of American architects, painters and sculptors met regularly while planning the fine arts section of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition...
in 1928 and 1929,—and was completed in 1935. It was originally meant to have been premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra during their 1932–33 season, with Richard Burgin
Richard Burgin
For the American writer, see Richard Burgin Richard Burgin was a Polish-American violinist, best known as associate conductor and the concertmaster of the Boston Symphony Orchestra .-Early life:...
as soloist, but Sessions did not finish the finale—originally to have been the third movement—in time. Ultimately deciding on a four-movement form, Sessions delivered the violin part to Burgin in the fall of 1934, while still orchestrating the last movement, and Koussevitzky agreed to program the concerto during the first half of the 1935–36 season. When Sessions expressed a preference for a better-known violinist, Burgin graciously stepped aside and Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti
Joseph Szigeti was a Hungarian violinist.Born into a musical family, he spent his early childhood in a small town in Transylvania. He quickly proved himself to be a child prodigy on the violin, and moved to Budapest with his father to study with the renowned pedagogue Jenő Hubay...
was named as the probable soloist. The Concerto was finally completed in San Francisco in August 1935, and the premiere was scheduled to take place in November 1936, but the now-intended soloist, Albert Spalding
Albert Spalding (violinist)
Albert Spalding was an American violinist and composer.-Biography:Spalding was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1888. His mother, Marie Boardman, was a contralto and pianist. His father, James Walter Spalding, and uncle, Hall-of-Fame baseball pitcher Albert Spalding, created the A.G...
, asked for a postponement and requested that Sessions compose a new finale. Sessions declined and released the violinist of his obligation to perform the concerto. Spalding could not master the violin part, especially the "punishingly fast" tarantella finale, and the performance was cancelled at the last minute. The concerto was finally given its first performance with a professional orchestra by Louis Krasner
Louis Krasner
Louis Krasner was a renowned Ukrainian-born American classical violinist who premiered the violin concertos of Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg.-Biography:...
and the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Dimitri Mitropoulos, on November 14, 1947, though an earlier performance had been given in Chicago on January 8, 1940 by Robert Arthur Gross, the WPA Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and Izler Solomon
Izler Solomon
Izler Solomon was an American orchestra conductor, active mostly in the Midwest....
, and Gross also performed the first two movements in 1941 with the National Youth Orchestra under Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Stokowski
Leopold Anthony Stokowski was a British-born, naturalised American orchestral conductor, well known for his free-hand performing style that spurned the traditional baton and for obtaining a characteristically sumptuous sound from many of the great orchestras he conducted.In America, Stokowski...
.
It is dedicated to Sessions' first wife, Barbara.
The concerto's advocates have included Tossy Spivakovsky
Tossy Spivakovsky
Nathan "Tossy" Spivakovsky was a Jewish Russian-born, German-trained violinist, who taught in Australia and later settled in the United States.-Biography:...
(who gave the New York premiere with Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
conducting in 1959); more recently, Jorja Fleezanis and Ole Bohn, who has made the work's second recording.
Style and form
Sessions regarded his concerto as a pronounced move away from his previous neoclassicalNeoclassicism (music)
Neoclassicism in music was a twentieth-century trend, particularly current in the period between the two World Wars, in which composers sought to return to aesthetic precepts associated with the broadly defined concept of "classicism", namely order, balance, clarity, economy, and emotional restraint...
style. It marks the beginning of his characteristic, unique style featuring extended, continuously flowing sections in which ideas surface, gain clarity and definition, and then recede again into the general flow. 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...
:
- Largo e tranquillo, con grande espressione (ca. 9–11 minutes)
- Scherzo (Allegro) (ca. 6–8 minutes)
- Romanza (Andante) (ca. 4 minutes)
- Molto vivace e sempre con fuoco (ca. 10–11 minutes)
The first movement opens with two motifs
Motif (music)
In music, a motif or motive is a short musical idea, a salient recurring figure, musical fragment or succession of notes that has some special importance in or is characteristic of a composition....
, a rising diatonic segment in the trombone consisting of the first five notes of the B minor scale, and a more intense, jagged line in the trumpet, in a rapidly rising and falling pattern covering a diminished eleventh. These two figures occur throughout the entire concerto, and serve to unify the whole. The third movement is joined to the finale by a cadenza for the soloist, which employs a sort of metric modulation
Metric modulation
In music a metric modulation is a change from one time signature/tempo to another, wherein a note value from the first is made equivalent to a note value in the second, like a pivot...
in which the violin accelerates through a measure of thirty-seconds to a bridge passage of sextuplet thirty-seconds, entering the finale with a passage equivalent in basic pulse though not in speed with the previous movement.
Recordings
- Paul ZukofskyPaul ZukofskyPaul Zukofsky is an American violinist and conductor known for his work in the field of contemporary classical music.-Career:...
, violin; ORTFRadiodiffusion-Télévision FrançaiseRadiodiffusion-Télévision Française was the French national public broadcasting organization established on 9 February 1949 to replace the post-war "Radiodiffusion Française" , which had been founded in 1945...
Orchestra, Gunther SchullerGunther SchullerGunther Schuller is an American composer, conductor, horn player, author, historian, and jazz musician.- Biography and works :...
, conductor. CRI Recordings (CRI 220 USD LP, 1968, and CD 676, 1994.) - Ole Bohn, violin; Monadnock Festival Orchestra, James Bolle, conductor. Albany RecordsAlbany RecordsAlbany Records is an American classical music record label focusing particularly on contemporary classical music. It was established by Peter Kermani in 1987, and is based in Albany, New York.-External links:**...
ALB 938, 2007.
Sources
- Anon. 1935. "Novelties Named by Koussevitzky: Symphonies by Roussel and [Vaughan] Williams Brought Back by Boston Conductor: American Works Figure: Six Considered for Programs of the Season—Memorial to Loeffler Planned". The New York Times (September 30): 12.
- Babbitt, MiltonMilton BabbittMilton Byron Babbitt was an American composer, music theorist, and teacher. He is particularly noted for his serial and electronic music.-Biography:...
. 2003. The Collected Essays of Milton Babbitt, edited by Stephen Peles. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - Carter, ElliottElliott CarterElliott Cook Carter, Jr. is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer born and living in New York City. He studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1930s, and then returned to the United States. After a neoclassical phase, he went on to write atonal, rhythmically complex music...
. 1959. "Current Chronicle: New York". The Musical Quarterly 45, no. 3 (July): 375–81. Reprinted as "Roger Sessions: Violin Concerto (1959)", in Elliott Carter: Collected Essays and Lectures, 1937-1995, edited by Jonathan W. Bernard, 175–80 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997). ISBN 1-878822-70-5. - Cone, Edward T.Edward T. ConeEdward Toner Cone was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, and philanthropist.Cone studied composition under Roger Sessions at Princeton University, receiving his bachelor's in 1939...
, and Roger Sessions. 1966. "Conversation with Roger Sessions". Perspectives of New Music 4, no. 2 (Spring-Summer): 29–46. - Harman, Carter. [1968]. "Roger Sessions: Violin Concerto (1935)". Sleeve notes for CRI SD 220. New York: Composers Recordings, Inc.
- Henahan, Donal. 1968. "Reviews of Records: Roger Sessions: Violin Concerto (1935). Paul Zukofsky, violin; Orchestre Philharmonique de l'Office de la Radiodiffusion-Television Fransaise, cond. Gunther Schuller. Composers Recordings, CRI-220-USD (stereo or mono). Robert Moevs: Musica da Camera (1965); Variazioni Sopra una Melodia (1961). Jack Glick, viola; Robert Sylvester, cello; Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, cond. Arthur Weisberg. Ezra Sims: Third Quartet (1962). Lenox Quartet. Composers Recordings, CRI-223-USD (stereo or mono.)". The Musical Quarterly 54, no. 3 (July): 385–87. JSTOR link.
- Olmstead, Andrea. 2008. Roger Sessions: A Biography. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9780415977135 (hardback); ISBN 9780415977142 (pbk.); ISBN 9780203931479 (ebook).
- Schubart, Mark A. 1946. "Roger Sessions: Portrait of an American Composer". The Musical Quarterly 32, no. 2 (April): 196–214.
- Sessions, Roger. 1937. Violin Concerto (score). [N.p.]: Edgar Stillman-Kelly Society; New York: Affiliated Music Corporation. Reprinted, New York: E. B. Marks Music Corp, 1959. Reprinted, Boca Raton, Fla.: Masters Music Publications, 2001.
- Steinberg, MichaelMichael Steinberg (music critic)Michael Steinberg was an American music critic, musicologist, and writer. Born in Breslau, Germany , Steinberg left Germany as one of the Kindertransport child refugees...
. 2000.
Further reading
- Imbrie, AndrewAndrew ImbrieAndrew Welsh Imbrie was an American composer of contemporary classical music.-Career:Imbrie was born in New York on April 6, 1921, and began his musical training as a pianist when he was 4. In 1937, he went to Paris to study briefly with Nadia Boulanger...
. 1962. "Roger Sessions: In Honor of His Sixty-Fifth Birthday". Perspectives of New Music 1, no. 1 (Autumn): 117–47. - Prausnitz, FrederikFrederik PrausnitzFrederik William Prausnitz was a German-born American conductor and teacher. His grandfather, Wilhelm Prausnitz, was the dean of the medical school at Graz, as well as a Privy Counsellor...
. 2002. Roger Sessions: How a "Difficult" Composer Got That Way. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195108922. - Sessions, Roger. 1992. The Correspondence of Roger Sessions, edited by Andrea Olmstead. Boston: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1555531229