In Memory of Roger Sessions
Ayano Ninomiya, violinist, Harvard Musical Association, May 16, 1997
Ayano Ninomiya, violinist, Boston Conservatory, April 10, 1998; Cheri Markward, The Boston Conservatory
“In Memory of Roger Sessions” for solo violin was written during Christmas in 1986. The work consists of three short movements: “Elegy,” “Parody,” and “Dialogue.” “Elegy,” based on a theme from Sessions’s most ambitious work, the opera Montezuma, is a slow rhapsodic movement with implied counterpoint. “Parody” refers to the mocking character of the second movement as well as to its Renaissance definition, a form of homage paid by quoting the music of another composer. Ten of Sessions’s works, from the Black Maskers for orchestra to the Sonata for solo violin, all identified in the score, are quoted in a seamless set of sarcastic variations. “Dialogue” is an imagined conversation between myself and Sessions much like our actual conversations. Our names are spelled as musical themes that are presented antiphonally and simultaneously, and, as in reality always, Sessions has the last word.
More Solo Instruments Works
Prelude and Fugue in a minor for organ solo, Opus 195
Prelude and Fugue in F major for organ solo, Opus 188
Prelude and Fugue in C major for organ solo, Opus 187
Prelude and Fugue in F major for organ solo, Opus 186
Prelude and Fugue in b minor for organ solo, Opus 185
Prelude and Fugue in A major for organ solo, Opus 184
Prelude and Fugue in Eb major for organ solo, Opus 182
Prelude and Fugue in E major for organ solo, Opus 180
Prelude and Fugue in c minor for organ solo, Opus 178
Prelude and Fugue in D major for organ solo , Opus 177
Chorale Fantasy and Fugue in e minor for organ solo, Opus 175
Prelude and Fugue in F Minor for Organ, Opus 148