Music: Stravinsky's Boswell

The late Igor Stravinsky's life was the best documented of any composer's since Beethoven. Why? Largely because of a bespectacled, quizzical-looking musician named Robert Craft, 48. For the last 23 years of Stravinsky's life, Craft served the old master as rehearsal conductor, aide, intellectual catalyst, amanuensis and surrogate son. Moreover, Craft worked with Stravinsky on innumerable magazine articles and six semi-autobiographical books—a series that is supplemented this week by the publication of Craft's Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship 1948/1971 (Knopf; $12.50).

Throughout this distinctive musical and literary collaboration, Craft projected to a...