Roger Sessions's Fugal Studies with Ernest Bloch: A Glimpse into the Workshop

Abstract

Among the holdings of the Firestone Library of Princeton University is a large collection of manuscripts, documenting Roger Sessions's work as a student of composition. The collection, compiled and given to the library by the composer, has been generally available to scholars (as stipulated by Sessions) only in the few years since his death. It thus constitutes an important, yet virtually untouched, resource for investigation of Sessions's life and works.1 The contents of the collection are preserved in three portfolios, corresponding to a basic chronological arrangement of material. One body of manuscriptsundated, but by all indications reflecting work undertaken before 1919-is enclosed in a portfolio labeled Exercises and in Form. The entry on the cover of a second portfolio, Studies in Counterpoint 1933-41', indicates contents that date from a much later time-indeed, well after Sessions's student years. These groups of manuscripts (which represent the earliest and the most recent portions of the collection, respectively) are essential components to the complete picture of Sessions as a student of composition. The focus of this article, however, is on the remaining portfolio. Its contents, dating from 1919-20, are rooted in an especially noteworthy phase of Sessions's training, identified by the title under which the manuscripts are gathered: Studies with Ernest Bloch. The events of Sessions's years as a student of Bloch have been fairly well documented in the scholarly literature.2 It seems that he originally came to Bloch in 1918 in response to a creative crisis that he felt required the special help of a teacher who was also an accomplished