In the 19th century, architects drew freehand, in the early 20th - they moved to straightedge and tools. Wright explained it as "sine this was hte age of the machine, I wanted to be able to make the machine produce beauty." My grandfather tells the story of a draughtsman who drew mechanical drawings freehand so well that his employers thought he was using tools - and how the man nearly quit when his supervisor said this in public. In the present as computerised and coloursied drawings have become the norm a new and different presentation has come to the fore with each project. The point of this is that buildings are approved based on their sketches more than their reality. In each age the kind of buildings that people wanted to build fit with the kind of tools they used, which presented their desired conceptions in the best possible light. Some years ago there was a large push to make Sessions an "important" composer. There wer several laudatory articles about his symhonies, his second in particular, and several performances. The book that Steve mentioned was published - and ... Nothing happened. The same people who liked Sessions before liked him after, the same people who disliked him disliked him afterwrads. But these few in the fish bowl are the very small minority. The vast majority of classical listeners had not heard, nor heard of, Roger Sessions. There was not great fear of his music as "cerebral", "dissonant" or anything - it was simply obscure. Unknown. And the burst of publicity - labelled by critic Steve Hicken as "The Flavor of the Month" syndrome - did nothing to make those people care about his music. It did not generated condemnation or much of anything else. Sessions music looks a certain way "on paper" - 12 tone, but not serial, American, studied here and there - and - these criteria for his music all come out of the obessions of his moment in musical history. His personality comes across the same way on paper. They are, if you will, the sketch of the building, the sketch which apporves or disapproves the performance. More perfromances are given based on a firendly meeting over drinks or cofee than on readings of scores. But then it gets down to the music, the building itself. And here is where Sessions fails - he fails because he is - even under the terms of what he is doing - dull. Let us take the slow movement of his 6th symphony as a paradigmatic example of why. The chord progression should be familiar to anyone who has listened to any amount of atonal music. It is sufficently recognisable that even people who do not like atonal music can hum along with it. Notice how each note in the main progression - the goal tone - follows ex-act-ly at e-ven -int-er-val-s to the last. Now let us compare the same basic material in two other places. First in one of its early uses - Messiaen's Turangalia, and the second in Cart'ers First string quartet. Both predate the Session's symphony. In Messiaen the horns are indeed churning along the same progression in several places. But in each case there is a wleter of counter rhtyhms swaying around them, a wealth of ideas which make the hrons sound like resolutions of an overtone series - paticularly in the manner described by Messiaen - "the faintest after echo of the tritone resolves down to its fundmental - as any sensitive ear can hear." The horns become - not a chord progression, but an echo and a reverberation of the totality of sound. Carter's use is very different, he is indeed using the same, highly recognisable, progression in the first movement of the first string quartet. However note how the flling of each note is rhythmically variable - the listener, far from being boared by having the expected note heard in the expected register at the expected time - is waiting upon its arrival, it ecomes the manner in which the listener participates in the unfolding rhythmic complexities of the work. Its very recognisability is not a detriment - but a key feature - of what is being done, a more attenuated progression would not be useful in the same way. This is analogous to Berliz' use of root tone based progressions in areas where - "the falling of the note follows no ordained or predictable pattern." Again to represent "Nature" and its predictable, yet ungridable, movement. Liszt said t best of Chopin - "Note the swaying of the tree, notice how its myriad sounds move back and forth over the main rhythm, and yet are recognisable as a whole. That is Chopinesque rubato." When compared with his words - the music falters. Sessions the interviewer wites "I tried to use the row rhapsodically, based on my feeling and intuition." But next to the rather staid use of large scale rhtym, with its blocky four bar sound - "rhapsodic" only in the reveries of the private marching in strict line. His mind is free, but his actions are not. He is like all the others in his rank, perhaps his fantasies are necessary for him to keep going, but he cannot see himself at a distance. Or perhaps he can, and hence indulges ever more in ideas such as this. What comes across is a common tragedy - one shared by fellow New York Schooler David Diaom. Diamond spends a long time talking about the importance of basic technique in his classes as compared to various other teachers - often jabbing at Sessions by name. But Diamond is no more imaginative than Sessions in the same areas - and Diamond certain does not excel Sessions in any identifiable area of counterpoint, harmony or melodic construction. His music is more aimable, and hence more listenable to many people. People often confuse this aimiability with "accessibility". The two are not the same. Haydn is oftne aimiable in works with extremely subtle, indeed almost inaccessible complications, and the message of Penderecki's "Threenody for the victims of Hiroshima" is intantly accessible, but hardly aimiable. The drawing which Sessions presents, as Steve Schwartz implies, is indeed one which has its appeal - romantic, rhapsoidc, expressive, intelligent. It draws one in sympathy and makes one wonder what this music would be like, produt of such an erudite and humane exterior. However, the same qualities shine through in an interview by Phillip Glass - humane, reacting against mechanism, intelligent in his observations, curious, brightly skeptical about easy ways out. Interviews with composers end up being pretentious, composers, from moment to moment generally know no more about what they are doing than anyone else. It takes an entire ecology and environment to produce coffe. And yet eating the dirt will not do you any good. Nor will taking a picture of a beautiful vista - many beautifuyl areas have soils useless for agriculture. In fact the uselessness of their soil makes it more likely they would have bene left alone, and hence remain in their natural wild state. The saem is true of the contoritons needed to create - oftne they alter the personality of the bearer to make him or her less attractive to others, because of the tensions and tastes required. How much easier to remain a sketch of ones possibilities, and reserve ones genius for ones career and ones talent for ones art. A common problem, and, in view of the generally flat reaction to Sessions even among those who are interested in 20th century music, quite possibly true. Stirling Newberry <[log in to unmask]>