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From his musical beginnings as a piano player in gambling houses and society cafes, Louis Horst (1884-1964) became one of the chief architects of modern dance in the twentieth century. Accepting a job as musical director for the Denishawn Dance Company in 1915, Horst set out on a remarkable career ...

From his musical beginnings as a piano player in gambling houses and society cafes, Louis Horst (1884-1964) became one of the chief architects of modern dance in the twentieth century. Accepting a job as musical director for the Denishawn Dance Company in 1915, Horst set out on a remarkable career that would eventually embrace composing, theorizing, and teaching. He had an incalculable influence on many important dancers of the day, particularly Martha Graham, who was his student and intimate for decades. Horst's biography, recounted here in rich detail by Janet Mansfield Soares, constitutes a crucial and colorful chapter in the story of modern American culture. At the center of this story is Horst's relationship with Martha Graham. "I did everything for Martha", Horst said late in life. Indeed, as her lover, ally, and lifelong confidante, he worked with such conviction to make her the undisputed dance leader in the concert world that Graham herself would later remark: "Without him I could not have achieved,anything I have done". Drawing on the conversation and writings of Horst and his colleagues, Soares reveals the inner workings of this passionate commitment and places it firmly in the context of dance history. Horst emerges as a man of extraordinary personality and multifaceted talent. Soares shows how his dance scores, such as the one for Graham's Primitive Mysteries, became models for America's leading composers. She describes Horst's musical relationship with important figures such as Doris Humphrey and Helen Tamaris, as well as their German counterparts. She documents his founding and editing of the journal Dance Observer in an attempt to win recognition for American dance, anenterprise that established him as a leading critic of his time. Above all, Soares evokes Horst as a teacher. At the Neighborhood Playhouse, the Bennington School of Dance, the American Dance Festival, and Juilliard, he trans

For more than half of his long life, composer Roger Sessions was a commanding figure on the American musical scene. He enjoyed the solid respect of his peers, and as a teacher of a generation of composers and author of compelling writings on his craft, his influence on musical thought remains ...

For more than half of his long life, composer Roger Sessions was a commanding figure on the American musical scene. He enjoyed the solid respect of his peers, and as a teacher of a generation of composers and author of compelling writings on his craft, his influence on musical thought remains profound. Yet, even in his lifetime, his music endured vastly disrespectful neglect. He was a "difficult" composer. Sessions was well aware of it. In a New York Times article, he wrote, "I have sometimes been told that my music is 'difficult' for the listener. There are those who consider this as praise, those who consider it a reproach. For my part I regard it as, in itself, neither one or the other...it is the way the music comes, the way it has to come." The way Sessions's music "had to come" is a recurrent focus of this biography. As the story is told, often in the composer's own words, the complex picture emerges of a remarkable man who, gradually and not very willingly, learned to accept his unexpected lot as a "difficult" composer. Frederik Prausnitz, an acquaintance of Sessions and conductor of his work, combines personal and musical insights to present this fascinating portrait of an influential, yet often overlooked, modernist composer.