Editing Roger Sessions (section)

==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 descendant of [[Samuel Huntington (statesman)|Samuel Huntington]], a signatory of the [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]].{{sfn|Olmstead|2008|p=7}} Roger studied music at [[Harvard University]] from the age of 14. There he wrote for and subsequently edited the ''Harvard Musical Review''. Graduating at age 18, he went on to study at [[Yale University]] under [[Horatio Parker]] and [[Ernest Bloch]] before teaching at [[Smith College]]. With the exception, mostly, of his [[incidental music]] to the play ''The Black Maskers'', composed in part in Cleveland in 1923, his first major compositions came while he was traveling Europe with his first wife in his mid-twenties and early thirties.{{sfn|Prausnitz|2002|pp=70–72, 296–298}}

Returning to the United States in 1933, he taught first at [[Princeton University]] (from 1936), moved to the [[University of California]], Berkeley, where he taught from 1945 to 1953, and then returned to Princeton until retiring in 1965. He was elected a Fellow of the [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] in 1961.<ref name=AAAS>{{cite web|title=Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter S|url=http://www.amacad.org/publications/BookofMembers/ChapterS.pdf|publisher=American Academy of Arts and Sciences |access-date=April 20, 2011}}</ref> He was appointed Bloch Professor at Berkeley (1966–67), and gave the [[Charles Eliot Norton Lectures]] at Harvard University in 1968–69. He continued to teach on a part-time basis at the [[Juilliard School]] from 1966 until 1983.<ref name="Olmstead">{{harvnb|Olmstead|2001}}</ref>

He was a friend of both [[Arnold Schoenberg]] and [[Thomas Mann]].{{sfn|Olmstead|2008|pp=[https://books.google.com/books?id=1jOvpanYR5EC&pg=PA304 304–305]}}

In 1968 Sessions was awarded the Edward MacDowell Medal for outstanding contribution to the arts by the [[MacDowell Colony]]. Sessions won a [[Pulitzer Prize Special Citations and Awards|special Pulitzer Prize]] in 1974 citing "his life's work as a distinguished American composer."<ref>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Special-Awards-and-Citations "Special Awards and Citations"]. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved December 3, 2013.</ref> In 1982 he won the annual [[Pulitzer Prize for Music]] for his [[Concerto for Orchestra (Sessions)|Concerto for Orchestra]], first performed by the [[Boston Symphony Orchestra]] on October 23, 1981.<ref>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Music "Music"]. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved December 3, 2013.</ref>

Sessions married Barbara Foster in June 1920. They divorced in September 1936. He married Sarah Elizabeth Franck in November 1936. They had two children, [[John Porter Sessions]] (1938–2014) and [[Elizabeth Phelps Sessions]] (born 1940). John Sessions became a professional cellist. Roger Sessions died at the age of 88 in [[Princeton, New Jersey]].