Arthur Hartmann (1881-1956), a celebrated violinist who performed over a thousand recitals throughout Europe and the United States, met Claude Debussy in 1908, after he had transcribed "Il pleure dans mon coeur" for violin and piano. Their relationship developed into friendship, and in February 1914 Debussy accompanied Hartmann in a performance of three of Hartmann's transcriptions of Debussy's works. The two friends saw each other for the last time on the composer's birthday, 22 August 1914, shortly before Hartmann and his family fled Europe to escape the Great War. With the publication of Hartmann's memoir "Claude Debussy as I Knew Him", along with the twenty-two known letters from Claude Debussy and the thirty-nine letters from Emma Debussy to Hartmann and his wife, the richness and importance of their relationship can be appreciated for the first time. The memoir covers the years 1908-1918. Debussy's letters to Hartmann span the years 1908-1916, and Emma (Mme) Debussy's letters span the years 1910-1932. Also included are the facsimile of Debussy's Minstrels manuscript transcription for violin and piano, three previously unpublished letters from Debussy to Pierre Lou�s, and correspondence between Hartmann and B�la Bart�k, Nina Grieg, Alexandre Guilmant, Charles Martin Loeffler, Marian MacDowell, Hans Richter, and Anton Webern, along with Hartmann's memoirs on Loeffler, Ysa�e, Joachim and Grieg. Samuel Hsu is a pianist and Professor of Music at Philadelphia Biblical University. He completed his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1972 with a dissertation on Debussy. Sidney Grolnic has been a librarian in the Music Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia for over twenty years and serves as curator of the library's Hartmann Collection. Mark Peters has recently received his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology at the University of Pittsburgh; his dissertation was on J. S. Bach's sacred cantatas to texts by Mariana von Ziegler.

"The title work, "Journey On a Hospital Bed" (1924), a memoir by the Russian writer Lev Lunts, together with articles, letters and stories by the same author. To these are added articles and letters by 20-30 Russian writers with whom Lev Lunts was associated. The total contents consist of 13 articles from 1921-1966, 88 letters from 1923-1924, one long memoir from 1924, and 2 stories from 1921 & 1924, all (with one exception) translated from Russian into English for the first time. Illustrated by approx. 50 photographs of people and 10 reproductions of manuscripts, most from the 1920s. All the articles relate to the group "The Serapion Brothers" and the literary scene in St. Petersburg in the early 1920s. All the correspondence dates from 1923-1924, when Lev Lunts lay dying in a sanatorium and hospital in Germany"--Publisher info.