IN Britain, as elsewhere, the post-war years brought a far-reaching transformation in the intellectual and artistic climate. Its effects were equally felt in musical life: despite the continued creative activity of Vaughan Williams, Walton, and other composers who had dominated the scene during the 1920s and 1930s, by the late 1940s there were already signs of a shift in tastes and attitudes that would become increasingly pronounced over the next decade. The causes of this change of outlook were complex, but an important factor was the presence of a community of émigré musicians who had fled Nazi persecution. In their capacities as composers, performers, journalists, scholars, pedagogues, and administrators, members of that community exerted an influence far out of proportion to its comparatively small size, in some cases making exceptional contributions to the cultural life of their adopted country. One such was Hans Keller (1919–85), whose activities as a writer on music, broadcaster and teacher enriched and enlivened the British musical scene for almost four decades.

Although a number of publications have appeared since Keller's death that illuminate aspects of his life and work (notably, those by Christopher Wintle and Alison Garnham), the task of appraisal is still far from complete – especially when it comes to his copious writings. The nature of his output places considerable practical obstacles in the way of anyone wishing to get to grips with his thought, as much of it comprises fairly brief articles (often under 1,500 words in length) contributed principally to popular magazines and periodicals. Only a small proportion of these have been republished (in this respect, the collections edited by Christopher Wintle have rendered Keller an especially valuable service), and although some of the journals in which the articles appeared can now be consulted in digital repositories, this is by no means universally the case, and many items are not so easily accessible. The only extended book-length treatment of any topic that he published in his lifetime, the idiosyncratically titled 1975 (1984 minus 9), did not appear until 1977, eight years before his death. (It was posthumously reissued under the new title of Music, Closed Societies and Football.)