Methinks Craft doth protest too much. It is a pity that he should seek in this way to take on Stephen Walsh as an avowed adversary, particularly as such publicly expressed vituperation on his (Craft's) part will inevitably do far more harm than good and provide journalists with less conscience than Mr Christiansen with ample fodder for gleeful fuelling of this unseemly fire. I am not seeking to undermine the importance of Craft's rôle in Stravinsky's later life and work either, but one undermines the elevated scholarship of Walsh at one's peril; Walsh himself would be well advised to distance himself from this unfortunate business as far as is possible - except that I rather doubt that he will need any such advice, as I imagine he is already following it...

Perhaps, Bryn, but it is also true that a little distance can benefit critical and scholarly assessment. I think that, whatever the merits or otherwise of Craft's own role and writings, his voice has to be treated with as much care as the composer's own words should be (which, again, aren't always the most reliable source of information or insight). People like Craft do provide a unique and useful perspective and abundance of information, but there is still a requirement for scholarship that isn't personally involved with the composer in question.

Me neither 

I think that both you and Cross not only have a very valid point here but one which is perhaps especially acutely pertinent in the case of Stravinsky; Cross's remark about Stravinsky's frequent self-reinvention is particularly relevant here, in that artists who habitually do that kind of thing only make it even harder for their contemporaries to write about them in ways that can be guaranteed as representative and accurate. Writing about a living composer does indeed have its own problematic issues, but writing about one whom one knows personally is perhaps potentially fraught with even greater dangers.

Walsh's work is, to my mind, not only almost peerless in its own field but is the result of many years of constant and diligent research; his two volumes on the subject that he has almost made his life's work are truly formidable. That Craft appears to be attitudinising in the manner in which he is now reported as doing puts him in a rather poor light, I think; to my mind, this spite in the face of painstaking scholarship reeks of proprietoriality being undermined by reality.

This is an especially big problem with much explicitly 'political' music, I find, where critical opinion often consists of a parroting of what the composer (through title or programme note) has told us that a piece is 'about' (Penderecki's Threnody 'conveys the horror of nuclear war' or Finnissy's North American Spirituals 'delivers a searing statement about racism') without requiring much further investigation into if or how these sorts of ideas or sentiments are somehow made manifest in the music itself (about which it is much easier then to just talk about in terms of antiquated notions of taste and the like).

Has anyone ever compared Craft's relationship to Stravinsky with that of Anton Schindler with respect to Beethoven?

I am not aware that this has ever been done, although I suspect that if anyone did so they might just risk falling foul of Craft's lawyers while he's in the mood that he appears to be in at present.