April 2, 1982

Joe L. Allbritton, a Texas financier with experience in running distressed newspapers, has agreed to take over The Daily News, he and the owners of The News said yesterday. He has 30 days to negotiate with the paper's 11 unions, which have already acknowledged that some of the paper's 5,000 jobs will have to be cut to assure its future. The announcement by the owners, the Tribune Company of Chicago, and Mr. Allbritton, a former owner of The Washington Star, came after a three-month search by the Tribune Company for someone willing to gamble on being able to reverse the News's losses of $11 million last year and a possible $50 million this year. Trump Balked at Liability The agreement came after a last-minute break in negotiations with Donald J. Trump, a New York real estate developer who had been seeking to buy The News but who balked at taking on extra liability should the paper die. The agreement leaves the paper's chief physical asset, its 37-story Art Deco office building on East 42d Street, with the Tribune Company.

The Senate Armed Services Committee today proposed shaving $3.2 billion from President Reagan's $216 billion military budget. Senator John Tower, Republican of Texas, chairman of the panel, made it plain that the committee had adhered to most of the Administration's weapons programs but had decided to cut most of the money from two of them, the interim deployment of the first 40 MX intercontinental missiles and production of the Army's new attack helicopters. Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have said that $10 billion, or even more, could be lopped off the military budget, especially in Navy and Air Force programs. They contend, for example, that the B-1B bomber, whose overall cost could be $20 billion to $30 billion, is unnecessary and would be vulnerable to Soviet attack by the early 1990's.

THE correlation between music and ritual has been close throughout history and among all peoples. In the Christian churches, it has led to a spectacular, if unforseen, result: namely, the creation of a vast body of written music, whose complexity and variety have fueled constant growth and renewal. Even though Western music long ago stepped outside the church and began a life of its own, for the millennium and some centuries that it has been a recognizable entity, most of its activity has been in the service of the church that gave it birth. And it still seems to have close ties. It is interesting to see, for example, that as the Christian year reaches its zenith in the Easter season, musical activity also reaches a high-water mark and for a short time resembles the musical life that was the source of the tradition. During the 10-day period beginning today and extending through Easter Sunday, sacred music will once again be in the ascendant. Not only will New York's churches be filled with it, but the concert halls - monuments of music's liberation from the liturgy - will also be recaptured. Musical life will flourish and, in the process, remember its source.

Senator Russell B. Long of Louisiana, the ranking Democrat on the Republican-controlled Finance Committee, lined up with the Administration today in defense of the 1981 law that loosened the rules governing the use of leasing agreements to sell tax benefits. Senator Long's fervent statement of support as the committee began discussing how to raise revenue, and an attack on the law by Lloyd Bentsen, Democrat of Texas, were seen as signs that a hard battle over leasing is ahead. Senator Bentsen is Senator Long's friend and usually his ally.

''Fellow came by the other day and said, 'If I could just get back up to broke, I'd quit.'