Stravinsky the Music-Maker: Writings, Prints and Drawings

Stravinsky the Music-Maker is the third incarnation of a book that has been greeted with superlatives on each previous appearance. Hans Keller and Milein Cosman collaborated down the decades of their married life, Keller’s pen analysing music, Cosman’s catching its makers at work. Stravinsky was a source of fascination for them both, and their Stravinsky at Rehearsal appeared in 1962, to be expanded, two decades later, as Stravinsky Seen and Heard. Stravinsky the Music-Maker offers the most generous compilation of their work yet: it includes Keller’s complete articles on Stravinsky, written between 1954 and 1980, and augments Cosman’s celebrated prints and drawings with a number not previously published. The introduction, by the composer Hugh Wood, sites the Keller-Cosman partnership in the framework of the British musical life they enriched.

HANS KELLER (1919-85) fled Austria in 1938 and became a commanding critical voice in British music journalism and on the BBC from the end of the war until his death. He is the author of numerous books, many illustrated by his wife Milein Cosman, including Criticism (Faber), The Great Haydn String Quartets (Dent), Essays on Music (CUP), Jerusalem Diary, Film Music and Beyond and Music and Psychology (all Plumbago). A critic of insight and integrity throughout his life, he remains a powerful influence to this day.