It was a strange group: a destitute Southerner, a spy, and a Wunderkind. Yet Hunter Johnson (1906–98), Ross Lee Finney (1906–97), and Robert Palmer (1915–2010) shared a relationship as Kirkpatrick's main collaborators during the 1940s. The Second World War was raging, and Kirkpatrick was establishing himself in American academe. It was a decade full of struggle for each of these composers—Johnson trying to gain recognition, Finney trying to return to composition after a harrowing experience in Europe during the war, and Palmer trying to come out from under the wing of his mentor Roy Harris. The fruits of these composers' labors with Kirkpatrick during this decade were published by Valley Music Press and Music Press, two firms that flourished in the years during and immediately after the Second World War. Between the two presses, Kirkpatrick worked on twelve editions which spanned most of the decade. His involvement with both presses is summarized in tables 2.1 and 2.2.

This chapter offers an account of Kirkpatrick's role in these two presses. He was a founding member of Valley Music Press, and supervised a special American Piano Music imprint at Music Press. Finney, Johnson, and Palmer stand out as the composers with whom Kirkpatrick developed particularly close working relationships in these contexts. What ricocheted between Kirkpatrick and his composers ran the gamut from the most intimate aspects of their lives to broad questions of American musical culture. Over the course of their work together, national, political, and cultural identities became inextricably entangled.