Identical letters requesting their views on music in relation to the Federal Government and domestic and world affairs recently were addressed to the two presidential candidates, Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Senator John F. Kennedy, by the publisher of Musical America. The following is the letter, embodying five specific questions which are vital to the continuing development of music in this country.

     As the Nation's leading music magazine, Musical America feels a serious obligation to inform its readers about the attitude of our presidential candidates toward music. We hope that you share our convictions as to its importance, but we want above all your frank opinions.
     You will find in this letter some specific questions, but we shall be only too happy if you have other comments to make.
     The status of music in our national and international political life is of profoundest concern to a large and far-flung group, and our readers in all 50 States and 73 foreign countries will listen to what you have to say with keen interest.
     Three recent explosive events point out the tremendous necessity of music as a front-rank ambassador. While the Vice President was being stoned in South America the New York Philharmonic and Leonard Bernstein were being cheered by enthusiastic crowds. At the time of the summit breakdown last spring, Isaac Stern, Van Cliburn, and the "My Fair Lady" company were playing to warmly demonstrative audiences all over Russia. And, thirdly, when President Eisenhower was turned back from Japan, the Boston Symphony was accorded rousing receptions in every appearance throughout Japan, with the tour being one of the most triumphant in their entire career.
     Musicians and music lovers are fast learning that they can be influential, politically speaking, by joining together on artistic issues. The changes in the tax bills for entertainment, the Thompson-Wainwright bill, and other recent measures will occur to you as readily as to us as instances of this. But there is still room for conflicting opinions about the specific steps to be taken. The following questions are offered merely as an outline, but they touch upon problems which vitally concern all of us who love and believe in music as more than a private pastime or amusement.

     1. Do you believe in the political importance of music as an international language, crossing all frontiers and surmounting all political hostilities?
     2. Do you believe that it is the responsibility of Government to support and sponsor a program of international artistic relations?
     3. What is your attitude toward Government subsidy? Do you approve of it in general? Do you think it is inevitable, if music is to fulfill its most fruitful role in national and international life? Do you think private subsidy should be relied upon as much as possible?
     4. Do you think that the Congress could be persuaded to pass measures offering substantial Government aid to music
            (a) as an instrument of international relations?
            (b) in national life, and in such fields as education, radio, television, and public performance?
     5. Have you felt personally the impact of music as a social and political force? Or do you think we musicians are exaggerating the practical importance of the arts in a time of crisis, with so many material problems to be solved?

     DEAR MISS JOHNSON: Thank you for the opportunity of offering to your readers my views on the importance of music in our national life and our world relationships. At the outset, I would like to make it clear that I deeply believe governmental consideration of the arts must always be on a nonpolitical basis. As your letter suggests, music is an international language, leaping frontiers and surmounting political dogmas. Although it is almost a universal tongue, it has always been the foremost form of expression for folklore and the passions of nationalism.
     Of course, there is a measure of universal language in all of the performing and visual arts, and when we consider the broader implications of your five questions, I think it is necessary to speak of all art.
     There can be no doubt that our present cultural exchange program is an effective method for promoting peaceful aspirations among the peoples of the world. This fact alone justifies governmental support, encouragement, and sponsorship programs of international artistic relations.
     Government subsidy is almost as old as the arts, particularly in Europe. Though use of Government subsidy has been less widespread in the United States, nevertheless several of our cities and States now use public funds to help subsidize artistic effort, including symphony orchestras, while our Federal Government maintains art galleries, museums, and armed services bands, symphony orchestras and choral groups. Basically, however, private subscription has been the chief means of underwriting deficits that appear almost inescapable in furthering the arts.
     Our great lack today is not sources of subsidy or an honest desire to promote the arts, but a program for reaching the goals we all seek. This is particularly true at the level of the Federal Government.
     Recognizing this missing element, President Eisenhower in his 1955 state of the Union message recommended that the Congress pass legislation establishing a National Advisory Council on the Arts to determine what our national program should be.
     Although the Congress has never completed action on this important legislation, the Congress did take an historic step in 1958 by enacting legislation chartering a National Cultural Center to be located in Washington and providing land for the construction of a building to be paid for by private subscription. Efforts to raise the money are now underway.
     If this legislation were passed, it would certainly be incumbent upon the next President of the United States to name an advisory council representative of the top people in all our arts, in the belief that it would produce a program that not only would resolve the questions you have raised in the field of music, but provide a firm base for expansion of all the arts and American participation in them in the future.
     With every good wish, Sincerely,

MISS THEODATE JOHNSON,
Publisher, Musical America,
New York, N.Y.

     DEAR MISS JOHNSON: The first thing to say about art in America is that Babbittry is behind us. We live in an era of impressive artistic achievement. Our painters, sculptors, musicians, dancers, and dramatists are the envy of the world.
     American industry has become the greatest consumer of the arts - for the buildings it erects, for decorative murals and sculpture, for products, packaging, and advertisements. For the drab ugliness of the early industrial age has been replaced by an age of good design.
     American cities now boast of their orchestras, operas, ballet, art museums, and local drama with the enthusiasm once reserved for population statistics. For in the quest for new commercial enterprise, cultural establishments exert a primary appeal.
     American education has opened its curriculums to the creative arts all across the country. No campus is now complete without a gallery, a drama and dance group, a resident poet and composer.
     And the American Government is even more dependent upon art. For art works direct; it speaks a language without words, and is thus a chief means for proclaiming America's message to the world over the heads of dictators, and beyond the reaches of officialdom.
     Creative work is not work done to measure. The climate in which art thrives is a delicate climate. It must foster individual work by sensitive persons. And it is of real importance that the Government not disturb this climate by meddlesome incursions, or limitations on the free play of mind.
     But if the Government must not interfere, it can give a lead. There is a connection, hard to explain logically but easy to feel, between achievement in public life and progress in the arts. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. The age of Lorenzo de Medici was also the age of Leonardo da Vinci. The age of Elizabeth also the age of Shakespeare. And the New Frontier for which I campaign in public life, can also be a New Frontier for American art.
     For what I descry is a lift for our country: a surge of economic growth; a burst of activity in rebuilding and cleansing our cities; a breakthrough of the barriers of racial and religious discrimination; an age of discovery in science and space; and an openness toward what is new that will banish the suspicion and misgiving that have tarnished our prestige abroad. I foresee, in short, an America that is moving once again.
     And in harmony with that creative burst, there is bound to come the New Frontier in the arts. For we stand, I believe, on the verge of a period of sustained cultural brilliance.
     Sincerely,