Roger Sessions (1896–1985) was a composer and professor of music at Princeton and at the University of California at Berkeley. Kirkpatrick met him in Paris in 1932 and saw him fairly frequently there. Nadia Boulanger had provided RK with a letter of introduction. Sessions arranged for RK to play the clavichord for a group of his friends and offered suggestions about other concert possibilities. As the letter indicates, he began composing a harpsichord concerto for Kirkpatrick in 1935 while in California but never completed it.

August 17, 1935

Dear Ralph—

I have begun the harpsichord concerto—just the sketches, of course, and thus I hope to do it during the coming year some time. I don't know how soon I shall have something to show you—perhaps by December if you don't come back till then. But I wanted to tell you that I have started thinking about it, and if my composing goes at the rate it has been doing this summer, it will go very quickly. The flood-gates seem to have opened at last. I won't say more than that—but I am really a composer again and incidentally a completely new human being. I hope the concerto will be good. I started it quite without malice aforethought and found myself thinking in terms of the harpsichord as a completely new instrument—not a trace of reminiscence of any music I ever heard on it—Bach or Handel or Poulenc(!?!). So I have material for two movements—a 44 Allegro and a 68 Andante. The orchestra will be small: two flutes, oboe, English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, one Fag, one horn, two trumpets, triangle, snare drum, one violin, two violas, one cello, one contrabass.

However, those are plans and of course subject to change. I can't give all my time to it as my symphony has to be completed; and after that I have other big works which I absolutely have to write.