Arthur-Vincent Lourié was a significant Russian composer. Lourié played an important role in the earliest stages of the organization of Soviet music after the 1917 Revolution but later went into exile. His music reflects his close connections with contemporary writers and artists, and also his close relationship with Igor Stravinsky.
Lourié gives a biographical sketch of Sergei Koussevitzky, with a chronicle of the musical life of his time as its setting, solely because the fifteen years during which they knew each other bound them together with the combined memories of so many important events, experienced simultaneously, though perhaps in a different way, and for ever unforgettable.
From the author; 'What I have written is not a criticism nor a jubilee offering, but only, as I understand it, the objective testimony of one musician concerning another; the testimony of a friend and contemporary in regard to a period in which we met on a common path and in which we took an active part, each according to his abilities.'