I believe that we must first have the Advisory Council on the Arts. That, to me, seems the more important of the two bills because that Advisory Council can set principles and basic purposes and present to the American people the status which we have arrived at in our cultural life, and that is increasing daily which is shown by the reports which the President's Music Committee gets out annually. There is a great moral value, I feel, in these bills. It shows that our Government is interested and is not lagging behind the interest that other governments have shown, such as the Council in Great Britain which is assuming great importance; and I believe that such a council in our country would also assume great importance and be encouraging to the young people who need music in their lives. I know that those who are following me are going to talk more in detail but, unless there are any questions, I feel that I have just touched on the high spots and have nothing more that I want to suggest unless you have any questions that you would like to ask me, Mr. Chairman. Mr. THOMPSON. I thank you very much for your testimony, and your analysis is quite right. I feel, however meritorious the objectives are of the grant bills which are long overdue, that a logical first step is the long overdue and long awaited Federal Advisory Council or Commission, or whatever anyone wants to call it. We call it a Council now. At various times it has been called a Commission. It is in the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, a huge Department, very largely because it needs some place in which to reside. There are a great many people who have long felt that we should have a Cabinet position for cultural affairs including the arts. I agree with that. I think that it is a matter which will get attention within a matter of months or certainly within a very few years. In the meantime, however, the activities of the Government in the arts are so spread out and so poorly coordinated that this would offer great opportunity to give them a sense of direction. It is difficult to believe that only 3 or 4 years ago the Government for the first time gave music recognition by the charter granted to the National Music Council. We have concentrated, I am afraid, entirely too much on automobiles and bathtubs and things like that, and I think it is now quite proper a time to do this. I thank you very much for appearing. Maybe Mr. Martin has some questions. Mr. MARTIN. Mrs. Shouse, I notice that you mentioned that you felt there was perhaps a danger in setting this program up under Health, Education, and Welfare. Do you have a specific recommendation in regard to that? Mrs. SHOUSE. The only point that the chairman mentioned, that it is such a huge organization that I hope that the appointees will be strong enough to keep their identity and keep the identity of the Council before the American people because I think this is something, as the chairman spoke of, that the American people want very much. They want Government recognition of the arts in our country and the time has come when it is needed. Mr. MARTIN. Do you have any specific thoughts in regard to how these problems should be tackled by this Council if set up? For instance, specifically in the field of music, I know that in some of the European nations the opera and classical music are a great deal more popular than our so-called popular music. It enjoys a great recep tion in the United States. Do you have any specific thoughts in regard to how this Council could go about educating our youth in the United States to enjoy the opera and the classical music? Mrs. SHOUSE. The Council could be very influential in influencing the programs and appropriations in the States, I would think, by showing the need for music education. I know that some of the States are reducing the amount of their appropriation for the study of music. In spite of that, there are more instruments bought today than ever before in our history. It is a very large number. We have more symphony orchestras than we have ever had before, not full time, but the major ones are increasing in the number of weeks each year that they play. There is a great surge of music and I believe it is important to recognize the interest that is not only there but is latent. I believe that music is so basic to the general well-being of our people, young and old, that such an Advisory Council would pinpoint many things that need to be done and help them along, hurry them along. I do not know whether that answers your question or not. I believe that the direction that this Council on the Arts could give would be of tremendous help and also would help our people who are making trips to other parts of the world because they would have the Council to refer to for all kinds of information and help. Mr. THOMPSON. Thank you very much, Mrs. Shouse. Our next witness is Mr. Herman Kenin, president of the American Federation of Musicians of the AFL-CIO. Thank you very much for coming. Mr. Kenin, you have a transportation problem facing you. STATEMENT OF HERMAN KENIN, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN Mr. KENIN. Thank you very much. I am delighted to be here. My name is Herman Kenin. I am president of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada, AFL-CIO, with offices at 425 Park Avenue, New York City. I am here today in my official capacity as spokesman for more than a quarter of a million professional instrumentalists. But I voice, too, my personal views as a private citizen devoted to the arts and particularly to music. I might add that I speak for our union membership as lovers of music, also. Certainly no person would undertake a career in the economically hazardous and largely unrewarding profession of music were it not for his love of the art. I urge upon this subcommittee, your full committee, and upon the Members of this 87th Congress enactment into law of H.R. 4172 and H.R. 4174. Neither bill-nor the two together-provides the bricks and mortar needed so desperately to repair the tottering foundations of our great American musical heritage. But they do provide a start. Their enactment by this Congress could mean that in this area, at least, we are not operating in the awful twilight of too little and too late to preserve our national character and world leadership. Neither of these bills, Mr. Chairman, goes far enough. The Federal Advisory Council provided for in H.R. 4172 is not on the Cabinet level, as it should be. And I was delighted, Mr. Chairman, to hear an expression from you this morning that you favored the ultimate Cabinet level position. And the approach of H.R. 4174 to grants in aid is excessively modest. Its enactment, however, would be an affirmative adjunct to the Federal Arts Council. What, other than its physical safety, is more important to the survival of a nation than its culture? Why is it that America stands alone among the major powers in persistently ignoring this fact of life? We ignored it here at home even while our Marshall plan dollars were being used by beneficiary nations to nurture their own national arts. We continue to ignore it today when it has been demonstrated that our best ambassadors abroad have been from the thinning ranks of those who speak in the universal language of music. It is to be assumed that the first task of the Advisory Council on the Arts would be to survey our needs and to report on them. This assessment of our dereliction should-like the news of the first sputnikrattle every window in the Nation. That will be good medicine, indeed. We need to have our nerves jangled and our consciences troubled. We need to do something, Mr. Chairman, and do it now. For some years now, the American Federation of Musicians has been studying in depth the troubles of our symphony orchestras. We have a mass of information on this topic-all of it is distressingly gloomy. It demonstrates conclusively that serious music is doomed in the United States unless the Federal and State Governments help. Rather than quote our findings, let me instead point to the recent survey of the Education and Public Welfare Division of the Library of Congress. Forty-seven of the 50 States responded to the question of how much aid is given to the arts. The summary, printed in the February 2 Congressional Record, is shocking. In all of the 47 States only $202,825 was devoted to music. Only six States made any contribution whatever specifically to music. As H.R. 4174 presently is written, it contemplates matching Federal funds for grants to the arts made by the several States with a maximum grant of $100,000 annually to any State. We musicians feel that this is totally inadequate for music, to say nothing of the other performing arts. Yet, availability of even limited matching funds should stimulate investigation by the States and local communities into this serious condition of the arts. As some of you gentlemen who have fought so long and so valiantly for legislative action in this field know, the word "subsidy" engenders fear that Government dollars foreshadow Government control. This is a strawman that history belies in this country and all other countries outside the Iron Curtain. "Subsidy," in some minds, conjures visions of a move toward something un-American. Nothing could be further from fact. The Homestead Act did much to settle these United States; land grants to the railroads helped make us the greatest industrial nation; airlines, merchant marine, and science subsidies contributed to this Nation's mighty sinews. In the field of commerce, subsidy is accepted as sound fundamental Government policy. But, in the cultural field, it is somehow transmuted into something evil. When Government supports libraries, museums-even pays to preserve the whooping crane from extinction-why then is there objection to subsidy vitally needed to prevent the extinction of the career musician? I repeat, Mr. Chairman, this is nonsense that we can afford no longer. Union musicians are qualified experts on subsidy-in reverse. Our Government depends upon gratis services of Federation musicians for the music that accompanies its messages over the Voice of America. It is our free music that sells Treasury bonds and sparks recruiting drives. Some 60 percent of all music broadcast to our Armed Forces in Korea and on occupation duty is the free contribution of Federation musicians. The radio information service to war veterans, heard over 2,100 radio stations every week is tuned to recording rights given by our union. There are many other governmental services that, strangely enough, appropriate nothing for their music-borne information at home and abroad, which are beneficiaries of the generosity of our union musicians. Mr. Chairman, I urge upon you and this committee that neither of these bills is a matter of politics, but I am comforted by the recollection that our President has indicated support for a U.S. Arts Foundation. In October 1960 he said in a statement to Equity magazine, and I quote: I am in full sympathy with the proposal for a federally supported foundation to provide encouragement and opportunity to nonprofit private and civic groups in the performing arts. When so many other nations officially recognize and support the performing arts as part of their national cultural heritage, it seems to me unfortunate that the United States has been so slow in coming to a similar recognition. I will not attempt to improve on the language of our President. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I thank you for your patience and consideration. Mr. THOMPSON. I thank you, Mr. Kenin. I am really quite ashamed, following your testimony, that I have been so conservative in asking for grants. I am pragmatic, however, and I think that we will be extremely lucky if we get as much as is reflected in H.R. 4174. There seems to be a consensus among the many, many people interested in this type of legislation that we should have, at the Cabinet level, an officer concerned with cultural affairs. We are at the age now, particularly in this committee, of creating instant scientists and instant mathematicians and language experts and maybe, if the Soviets do something as dramatic in the field of music as they have done in the field of space, we can get something. Mr. KENIN. Well, they have, Mr. Chairman. The impact of it perhaps has not reached us but those in this field recognize what has happened in the field of the arts, praticularly with respect to instrumental music. I have talked to many of our instrumentalists who have come back from their tours under ANTA. I have talked to Dr. Roy Harris, the American composer who was there on a mission last year for the State Department and, although I do not want to use the Soviet Government as an example that we ought to follow, they have aroused the editors in this country about the need of providing these instant scientists that you are talking about. But there is enough evidence here that we are losing talented youngsters to other fields. I think that is a tragic loss not measurable in dollars. Mr. THOMPSON. This legislation is not designed to put us in competition with the Soviets or anyone else. This should have been done with the foundation of the Republic. There is no question about that. It is in a sense remedial, to have us catch up. When we have the end of the cold war, if we ever do, we will still be a nation with requirements for cultural life because we will still be concentrating perhaps too much on material things. I thank you very much for your testimony. Mr. MARTIN. I have no questions. Mr. KENIN. Thank you very much. Mr. THOMPSON. Is Dr. Gorton here? Our next witness is Dr. Thomas Gorton, the president of the National Association of Schools of Music and director of the School of Fine Arts at the University of Kansas. Thank you very much for coming, Doctor. STATEMENT OF DR. THOMAS GORTON, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOLS OF MUSIC, AND DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS, UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS Dr. GORTON. It is a pleasure to be here. Mr. THOMPSON. You may proceed also as you wish, Doctor. By that I mean that those of you who have prepared statements who would prefer to summarize them, please feel at liberty to do so. The full statements will be printed in the record anyway. Dr. GORTON. My statement is fairly concise so that I believe I will proceed, with your pleasure. It is my privilege to serve as spokesman, in support of the two bills under consideration, for 255 leading schools of music and departments of music of colleges and universities located in 41 States, where approximately 25,000 young musicians are currently enrolled in degree courses leading to professional careers in the various areas of music. In addition, these colleges and universities annually enroll many more thousands of students, majoring in other fields, in courses designed to bring them into contact with the great masterworks of music and thus create a discriminating and supporting audience for the performer. As Americans we are all proud of the development of a significant musical culture in the United States. Our great symphony orchestras are unsurpassed by those of any other nation. Gifted native musical performers such as Isaac Stern, Blanche Thebom, William Warfield, and Van Cliburn have received international acclaim. Our composers such as Howard Hanson, Aaron Copeland, and Samuel Bar |