Robert Craft (1923–2015)

Stravinsky's conversations with his amanuensis, Robert Craft, are irresistibly fascinating. Ranging from literary lights to artists and musicians, the people and places discussed are a connoisseur's delight. This is an absolutely delightful journey into our cultured past through the mind of one of the musical geniuses of the twentieth century.

Theirs always seemed an odd association-the tiny, obsessive master and the lanky, calm young American musicologist and conductor-but each was lucky in the other. Stravinsky found a superb biographer, devoted interpreter and endlessly resourceful companion, and Craft was given entree to a magical world of artistic figures and exotic places. The original Stravinsky, covering 24 years, was published in 1972, a year after the composer's death, and has been long out of print. This is an show more extensively revised edition, more than a third longer than the original, with the years 1948-1971 given fuller treatment, and with updated thoughts by the author. Craft notes that he had hurried the original book and was dissatisfied with it. The reader is the beneficiary of the revision. The sketches of Aldous Huxley, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, Ingmar Bergman, Arnold Schoenberg, Albert Giacometti and others are intimate, the anecdotes about "I.S." irresistible, the endless travels full of delectable detail. The production is lavish, with some 50 pictures, many in color. show less

An excellent compilation of essays about the arts, mostly music, and literature. The author, while primarily a musician, was deeply imbued with knowledge of all aspects of artistic culture. The most fascinating are his observations on Paul Bowles and Thomas Bernhard, among others.

Vera Stravinsky with the assistance of Robert Craft have produced a beautiful volume on the life of Igor Stravinsky. Filled with pictures, documents, and commentary, this is a volume to relish and browse in at your leisure.