zine. After graduation, he went to the Yale Music School to study under Horatio Parker. He remained three years in New Haven; then received the appointment of instructorship in the history and theory of music at Smith College. While at Smith, he found time to come to New York and study under Ernest Bloch. When the Cleveland Conservatory was organized around Bloch, two and a half years ago, Sessions accepted an engagement as instructor in theory and orchestration, and-has been associated with the institution since. A number of compositions preceded The Black Maskers; among them a symphony. But the Andreyev music constitutes an Opus 1.
The hour which strikes in it leaves us still a little stunned. Only a brief while since, we had been wondering whether the arrival of a musician with enough of chaos in him to make a world were truly possible in America; wishing indeed for the tone such an apparition would give to life, and nevertheless scarcely daring to expect to witness it in our own day. Signs of an efflorescence in the musical life were not wanting. Many young earnests of future performance had been made; and some were more than promises, merely: respectable and heartening performances. Nevertheless, the ripened, sovereign inner force was not yet present. Itself is such a miracle that one could not predict its arrival. And yet, that golden gift is among us to-day. About it, the musical life reconstitutes itself; gets a new gravity and solidness. It comes, as it must inevitably have come, as the voice of the living young people in a compromised and shoddy world. No Indian or negro, or bastard Scottish tunes. Absolutely, no red white and blue. Rather, the grey on grey of Russia. That, is more American. The music speaks an hundred ironic, pensive, conflicting moods. And we feel strangely at home; strangely rich and potent.—Whether Roger Sessions' gift is entirely for the theatre, we do not as yet know. The two best of the numbers, the turbulent chaos of Lorenzo's thought in Scene III, the prelude to Act II, symphonic as they are, were inspired directly by the vision of the play. But that fact is not necessarily significant. He may find himself even more richly in the absolute forms. In any case, it does not much matter. Sessions goes to a great career, whether he goes to the opera, or the ballet, or the symphony, or to all three. It is we who are to be congratulated. He himself is good luck.
