SESSIONS, Roger

A brainy American composer who entered Harvard at fourteen, he later studied with Horatio Parker (who also taught Charles Ives ) at Yale before beginning a teaching career at Smith College (1917–21) and the Cleveland Institute of Music (1921–25). Moving to Europe for several years, Sessions composed works reflecting the influence of Igor Stravinsky and Ernst Bloch (1880–1959), a Swiss composer whom Sessions had assisted in Cleveland. Mostly in absentia, he collaborated...