pressure on the opinions of teachers. But citizens never for a moment consider abolishing public education because of such strictures. Instead they put pressure on the government to keep hands off when it shows signs of tampering.

Music, like education, is a thing of national concern. We don't have to be told that Van Cliburn's achievements abroad-which incidentally cost American people nothing -have brought more prestige to America than all our space rockets put together. Nor that the New York Philharmonic playing at the Berlin Festival on September 22 and 23, 1960, was of such propaganda value as to warrant the hard-headed Ford Motor Company paying $150,000 to fly the 106 musicians over specially. What helps Americans abroad would, it is plain, help her to a like extent at home. Yet we are content to leave the nurture of this great cultural field to occasional philanthropists, whimsical in their favors and all too mortal in their life-spans, and to the loyal but much-put-upon "friends of music" working overtime to edge the indicators of those campaign thermometers to the top. To depend on such spasmodic giving in the field of music, which of all professions needs continuity and consistency of support, is to court defeat.

For it is clear that, to become professional, musical artists of symphonic calibre require longer growth and steadier nourishment than even the professions of doctors, lawyers and scientists. Nor are symphony orchestras organizations mushrooming overnight either. These need years and years of quiet and careful adjustments, years and years of accustoming players to each other, to their repertoires, to their conductors.

Under the circumstances, it is errant nonsense to say a government assist to our musical enterprises would hamper them or circumscribe them in their aims.

The recipients of grants from foundations and private philanthropies are decided on by the grantees and individuals according to principles evolved in their own private conclaves. No public pressure can be brought to bear on these organizations in making their decisions or in changing them after they are made. With government sponsorship, on the other hand, citizens would at least be able to insist on publication of the decisions and the reasons which brought them about. Public-minded individuals could set up a hue and cry if the government began overstepping its authority. In a word, government subsidy could be made subject to realign

ment and reallocations. But there it would none the less be, to be defended and fought for.

To fritter away time in pros and cons re subsidy, while young musicians shelve their instruments and our symphonic and operatic organizations struggle along on next to nothing, is little short of criminal. Rudolph Bing, Director of the Metropolitan Opera Company, summed up the situation exactly when he said, "What we need and need badly, is a Marshall Plan for the Metropolitan."

In saying that young graduates from our best conservatories have today insuperable obstacles to face is not citing exceptional cases. If you are interrupted someday by a doorbell ringing, when you are reading an article in one of the soft-soaping journals, boasting that we are a country “devoted to a furtherance of music in a degree unmatched in any other country at any time in the world," and, opening the door, are appealed to frantically by some nervous young man trying to sell a new type dishwasher, don't slam the door in his face. He may well be the same young man you spotted at the recent commencement exercises of your town's conservatory, then looking confident and alight with enthusiasm, but now spewed out into a world which believes automobiles and fur coats must be purchased but music is to be had for free.

The only solution is an immediate right-about-face, one which will make us recognize that music and the musician, as entities "advantageous to the public," must be given stable financial backing, and that the government must do its part in bringing this about.

Subsidy of music is no new thing in Europe. Italy was pouring money into opera when the tower of Pisa took on its famous slant in the fourteenth century. France's Opéra, along with the Louvre, has been that country's pampered pet since long before world wars were even thought of. Sweden's Stockholm Opera came into being in 1773 through the royal decree of King Gustav III, who himself wrote some of the operas' texts. Frederick the Great gave Berlin its first opera house in 1740. October 18, 1746, he issued the order: "Having received many complaints of the decline of the art of singing, and the neglect of it in our gymnasiums and schools, His Majesty commands that the young people in all public schools and gymnasiums shall be exercised more diligently therein, and to that end shall have singing lessons three times a week."

Still today opera seems to be the favored goal for subsidies in Europe. Practically every city in Germany has an opera company complete with orchestra and staff, not to speak of a fine building to house it and full equipment to facilitate it-all stabilized through grants from the federal, state and local governments. These "Staatsoper" service the entire region, with performances held in many cases nightly eleven months of the year. Though federal and state governments help subsidize such companies, the running policy is usually decided at the municipal level. Just now East and West Berlin authorities are competing fiercely for operatic prestige, each placing lavish resources at the disposal of the home company-the sort of cold war that even pacifists can revel in.

In France the Opéra and the Opéra Comique receive from the federal government (which holds the price cheap considering the returns) the equivalent of four million dollars annually. This amount, set by parliament, is renewed each year almost without debate. A special subsidy for premieres of contemporary operas goes to a recently established opera company, La Decentralisation Lyric, which tours as well as gives opera in the home town.

Austria pays off the annual deficits of the three "stages" of the Vienna State Opera: the Staatsoper, the Volksoper and the Redoutensaal. The Danish government meets the annual deficits of the Royal Theatre, including its ballet and opera. Three Swedish opera companies (in Stockholm, Goteborg and Malmo) receive annual grants from the State. This money, together with that given to the provincial orchestras and smaller provincial theatres in Halsingborg, Norrkoping, Uppsala and Boras, is collected mainly from governmentsponsored lotteries. The government of Greece covers the annual deficits of the National Opera of Athens. The Portuguese government subsidizes its opera, as do the governments of Belgium, Holland, Turkey and others.

Opera subsidy has been a comparatively late arrival in the Netherlands. In 1945 the Dutch authorities (state, municipal) decided to lend their financial support to an opera company which was based in Amsterdam and called the Nederlandse Opera. Today the company performs on an average of twenty-two different operas a year with 190 performances.

In Great Britain, the government through its Arts Council gives the equivalent of a million dollars annually toward the support of the opera at Covent Garden, the Royal Ballet at Sadler's Wells, the Old Vic Theatre and the Carl Rosa Opera. In 1957-58 the British Parliament voted these three organizations, all in London, $1,500,000 at the current rate of exchange.

In Italy, probably the most opera-minded country in Europe, subsidized opera houses are as thick as canals in Venice and as enthusiastically patronized. La Scala of Milan is the nation's pride, and, of course, supported accordingly; but even small towns have subsidized opera. These are also happy to stand host to opera companies originating from outside. Spoleto, for instance, gives its whole heart and money realized through sacrifices in other directions to a festival organized largely from the United States. And everyone has heard of the astonishing gesture of the Italian government

in 1958 of granting a subsidy of $16,000 to Chicago's Lyric Opera Company-a company, incidentally, which our own government had left strictly to its own resources.

The USSR boasts thirty opera companies, but these do not come under our present discussion. Subsidy, by dictionary definition, is “a government grant to a private enterprise." In Russia, government subsidy has been replaced by government ownership, and that is a horse of an entirely different color.

Symphony orchestras in Europe get under the wire of subsidy in many cases through their alliance with opera. The Vienna Philharmonic, for instance, benefits from the subsidy to the Vienna State Opera, since it functions as house orchestra to the opera.

Many countries, however, support symphony orchestras for their own sake. The Greek government covers the deficits of the State Orchestra of Athens. In Belgium the principal symphony orchestras receive both municipal and state subsidies. The municipal orchestras in Denmark are subsidized from 20 per cent to near total from municipal-national sources. The Stockholm Philharmonic has the Swedish State as one of its sponsors. The Portuguese government subsidizes symphony orchestras in both Lisbon and Porto, and bolstered up the latter orchestra when it was in danger of disbanding in 1956. Ireland's government extended grants to the Limerick Symphony Concerts Society and the Cork Orchestral Society for the 1960-61 season. The salaries of the instrumentalists of the Presidential Philharmonic of Ankara are provided by the State.

In Norway grants from the State help the Oslo Philharmonic Society to the extent of 200,000 kroner. Other sources of its support are: 330,000 kroner from the municipal authorities; 880,000 from the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation; 150,000 from the sale of tickets, and the remainder from bequests and other sources of income.

In contrast to its largesse in supporting opera, France seems a bit close-handed in respect to symphony orchestras. In Paris, four privately-run orchestras are supplied with small governmental subsidies in return for playing a number of first performances. Radio France pays one of these orchestras to broadcast a concert each Sunday.

Great Britain dispenses 20,000 pounds annually to the Liverpool Symphony, 20,000 to the Bournemouth Symphony, 17,000 to the Birmingham Symphony and 12,000 to the Lon