For Robert Craft

The conductor and author Robert Craft, who played a singular role in twentieth-century music history through his association with Igor Stravinsky, has died at the age of ninety-two. (This strangely curt obituary has been confirmed by several of Craft's friends and colleagues.) The degree to which Craft influenced Stravinsky and became his public voice has not ceased to cause controversy, and even in the past few years Craft stirred new turmoil with startling claims about Stravinsky's personal life. But this is not the occasion to carry on the debate. Craft can remembered now as a formidable early American advocate for the Second Viennese School; as a pioneering interpreter of Renaissance music, including Gesualdo; as an essential and assiduous witness of Stravinsky's final decades; as a feisty critic and essayist; and, above all, as a vital force in the creative process of a twentieth-century master. To have helped bring Requiem Canticles into the world is achievement enough.