What is most conspicuous about this book is what it isn't.

It isn't a biography. Even the question as to when the main character was born isn't answered. It certainly isn't a survey of ‘life and works’. There are enough of those books.

It isn't even a surveyable book, even though it is about a composer whose music is easily ‘surveyed’. Survey and summary are simplification, which in themselves aren't bad so long as it's apparent that that is the case. But because there have been so many surveys of Stravinsky already written, it appears as if something like a survey is possible. And that is just not true. The facts alone are too numerous for one to be able to write, with a good conscience, a surveyable book. A thorough investigation of the historic and musical relationship between Stravinsky and Schoenberg would supply enough material for a heavy volume.

That both Stravinsky and Krenek composed a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is not in itself especially startling, for it had been done before and has been done since. In his Conversations Stravinsky says that he was already familiar with Palestrina's complete service, as well as the other Lamentations of Tall is and Byrd. (He does not mention Krenek along with these, but acknowledges him elsewhere.) Stravinsky and Krenek both made selections from the Vulgate of the Lamentations: Stravinsky from chapters I, III, and V and Krenek from those sections which are used at a Catholic service on Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Saturday. Both works are structurally tripartite, and both treat the Hebrew letters separately from the text.