Questions about Music

by R. Sessions and Roger Sessions

Book Overview

We are asked (to put it politely) for whom we are writing... From his perspective as a composer, Roger Sessions discusses some basic questions raised by the experience of music: what do we mean by knowing a piece of music, or understanding it? In what ways is the relationship between composer and listener different today from what it was in the past, and what demands can each make on the other?

Music, like all nonverbal arts and certainly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393005712
• ISBN13: 9780393005714
• Release Date: October 1971
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 180 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

essential insights for classical music lovers

Just over 150 pages, Roger Sessions' "Questions About Music" is nonetheless packed with all kinds of valuable insights into the musical experience. The book is divided into six chapters & an epilogue; each of the chapters is a lecture that Sessions gave at Harvard from 1968-1969, when he held the Charles Eliot Norton professorship there. Those familiar with Sessions' dense, muscular, mostly atonal symphonies, may be surprised to find his prose rather witty and completely accessible. He sheds considerable light on such topics as the nature of musical cognition, the compositional process, and the difficulties inherent in speaking about an art form which does not involve words. This book is invaluable for professional musicians, and curious non-musicians will find it a helpful tool in comprehending some of the more "difficult" classical music out there.