Volume 16, Number 12 · July 1, 1971
Stravinsky: End of a Chronicle
By Robert Craft
February 19. New York. Asked by a friend what he would have chosen to be if he weren't a composer, I.S. frowns suspiciously and says, 'Why, who wants to know?' (He might have chosen to be a grammarian, among many possible alternative careers, as I realize at table when he conjugates a Russian verb for my edification, a hopeless goal.) Pursuing the matter from another angle, the friend then asks him to 'suppose that when you were a young man a beautiful goddess had offered you any career other than that of composer, what would you have chosen then?' 'Well, if she were really beautiful,' he says, 'I'd probably have chosen her.'
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