After reading a quote on the Monotonous Forest blog that Igor Stravinsky had counted James Brown among his favorite composers, I became curious how many - if any - interviews with the composer could be found online (and, of course, could I confirm the James Brown line). While I had no luck confirming the quote, I did find a fascinating little nugget of an interview with Stravinsky published in The New York Review of Books from March 1971. Here's a snippet:
"NYR: Does the state of the arts really depress you?
I.S.: Oh no. We live in a very exhilarating time, a little short of a Golden Age, perhaps, but, well, consider, in the visual arts, the recent Warhol retrospective at the Tate; in the dramatic arts, Broadway category, the revival of the Betty Boop period; in literature, the new genre of reality recalled on tape (bestselling fall title: "Manson's Love Life As Told By His 'Family' "); and in music, the increasing involvement of everybody except the composer. And these developments have in turn produced a great critic, Jimmy Durante, who described it all very accurately when he observed that 'Everybody is getting into the act.'" Read more of the interview.
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