"Robert Craft has sometimes been described as Stravinsky's Boswell," writes Mr. Griffiths, a Welshman, "but really there is no parallel for this story." [Is that so? I can think of at least two.] "In 1947, just twenty-three years old and fresh [sic] out of the Juilliard School, Craft wrote to the composer requesting help in getting hold of performing material for the then little-known Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which he wanted to include in a concert. The correspondence continued, and by the time the concert took place, eight months later, Stravinsky himself was on the platform, sharing the programme with Craft, conducting a new version of the Symphonies, and appearing for no fee, even though conducting was, for him at this time, a principal way of making money, and making money was, for him at any time, a way of life. No other incident shows him so generous to a young musician. 'He never told me why he did it,' Craft reports in 'Stravinsky: glimpses of a life,' 'and it remains a mystery.'
"It is perhaps less a mystery than it was before Craft's publication of his letters from Stravinsky, which reveal how, before their first meeting, he had obliged the composer in various errands, pleased him with gifts of records and books, and intrigued him as a young man of esoteric [sic] culture and intelligence. But we need another word, rare in such circumstances - 'love' - to explain how the relationship prospered, to the extent that Craft moved in with the Stravinskys in 1949 and remained with them until the composer's death twenty-two years later."
The two close parallels of which I can think are of course those of 1) Fenby's approach to the elderly Delius, and 2) the devotion of an esteemed member of this very forum to the cause of Sorabji. Are there other instances of this phenomenon? I suspect that the expression appropriate in these cases is not so much "love" as "dedication to the service of Art."
"It is perhaps less a mystery than it was before Craft's publication of his letters from Stravinsky, which reveal how, before their first meeting, he had obliged the composer in various errands, pleased him with gifts of records and books, and intrigued him as a young man of esoteric [sic] culture and intelligence. But we need another word, rare in such circumstances - 'love' - to explain how the relationship prospered, to the extent that Craft moved in with the Stravinskys in 1949 and remained with them until the composer's death twenty-two years later."
The two close parallels of which I can think are of course those of 1) Fenby's approach to the elderly Delius, and 2) the devotion of an esteemed member of this very forum to the cause of Sorabji. Are there other instances of this phenomenon? I suspect that the expression appropriate in these cases is not so much "love" as "dedication to the service of Art."
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