Over the past fifty years Roger Sessions has developed, in articles, lectures, and addresses, various themes that reflect the stages of his own musical and intellectual growth. These themes form the basis of the present collection of essays. Many of the essays deal with specific problems that musicians, especially composers, have faced during the past five decades: problems related to new musical styles and techniques, to the position of composers in society, to their responsibilities as teachers, to their role during the period of the world wars, to the mutual reactions of composer and audience, and to the basic questions of musical form and expression. The collection also includes a set of critical essays on such seminal figures as Bloch, Schoenberg, and Stravinsky.
Roger Sessions is the composer of a recently recorded cantata on Whitman's "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd" as well as numerous other works. He is the author of The Musical Experience of Composer, Performer, and Listener (Princeton). Originally published in 1979. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.