Jimmy's Music to Govern By

If a movie is ever made about the Carter White House, it will not be hard to score the sound track. The sound of music fairly reverberates through the West Wing almost all day long--and often far into the night. Carter has explored the White House collection of 2,000 LPs--donated by a record-industry group when Richard Nixon was President--and selected a few dozen albums of classical music for his secretary, Susan Clough, to spin on the turntable near her desk. The music is channeled to stereo speakers in Carter's private study so that he can play his records as long--and as loud--as he likes.

Clough says that Carter leaves the choice of pieces to play "in my hands." She starts her boss off gently in the morning with Bach and Schumann, working up in intensity as the day progresses to Beethoven, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky. At night Carter is his own deejay. Among his recent choices: Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, Grieg's Piano Concerto in A Minor and Franck's Symphony in D Minor.

Carter's taste for serious music comes as a minor surprise. Before they heard about his West Wing repertoire, most Washingtonians were only aware of Carter's predilections for Bob Dylan and the Allman Brothers.

Carter traces his fondness for the arts, and particularly music, to an influential schoolteacher he had in Plains and an Annapolis roommate who was an accomplished pianist. He and Wife Rosalynn once took a correspondence course in great operas (she complained that he played the records too loud). After two months in the White House, he has made three visits to Kennedy Center --for a Washington Opera Society production of Madame Butterfly, Hal Hoibrook's Mark Twain Tonight! and a New York City Ballet Company performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Brings Tears. Carter has not entirely done away with the usual White House practice of reaching to Hollywood or Broadway for entertainment at black-tie evenings, but he has managed to import classical stars like Pianist Rudolf Serkin, who played at the state dinner for Mexican President Lopez Portillo, and the Juilliard String Quartet, which played during Inaugural festivities in the East Room. After the guests had departed. Carter apologized to the quartet for not being able to give his full attention to the music and asked if they would perform an encore. Following a stirring rendition of a movement of Haydn's Opus 20, No. 1, Carter said, "You know, this is the kind of music that brings tears to the eyes."

Washington's arts lobby is encouraged by Carter as culture buff. Last week during a TV interview in New York, Opera Diva Renata Scotto turned to the cameras and declared: "I know that Jimmy Carter likes opera. But opera is a really big music and needs more Government support." Whether that is the kind of music that Carter wants to hear --given his budget-balancing promises --is still doubtful.

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