Old-fashioned things you'd like to see revived

In My Humble Opinion
221

I want to see the piano return as a standard feature in homes.

Pianos used to be ubiquitous in the average home. Now they are not. Other forms of entertainment (primarily TV) have replaced the piano, causing a sharp decline in piano sales. This is a shame.

There was a piano in our living room when I was a child and I attribute that to my great love of classical and jazz music in general, and piano music in particular.

There was a piano in most of my neighbor’s homes, too. What a treat it was to visit the home of a friend and listen to their Mom or Dad play a tune or two. Certainly better than watching the boob tube.

My older sister started piano lessons at a very young age and developed into a fine classical and jazz musician. She was the star performer at her high school and even won a scholarship to a fine school of music. Although she switched careers to nursing, she still plays for enjoyment all these decades later. She also taught herself to play the violin.

My older brother was pushed into piano lessons at an early age, too, but he never learned to play anything more difficult than chopsticks. Hey, not everyone can be Franz Liszt.

When I came along, I was not given piano lessons (one of the few things I blame my parents for), but I taught myself to play. Just having a piano in the house and listening to my sister play compelled me to learn the instrument. I never attained the level of playing of my sister, but I was good enough to play in bands as a teen and young adult. I taught myself to read music, but I mostly play by ear. I never would have learned to play had there not been a piano in the house.

I believe virtually all of the greatest composers and virtuosos grew up in a home with a piano or keyboard: The Bachs (organ), Mozart (harpsichord), Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, et al. To be truly great, you need to begin playing at an early age.

The lack of pianos in modern homes is, IMHO, the reason we won’t see the likes of Beethoven ever again.

There certainly are top-level concert piano virtuosos around today, but I can think of none who didn’t grow up with a piano in their home and started lessons at an early age.

Yuga Wang is my favorite contemporary pianist. She began serious lessons at age 6. By age 21, she was an internationally recognized concert pianist, giving recitals around the world. Her playing is flawless.

Bring back the piano. We don’t want to lose musicians of the highest order.

222

Well, some homes still have pianos, even if it’s more rare now. Those homes could produce the next Beethoven.

But I agree with your post in general. Both my best friends growing up had pianos in their homes and I did enjoy going their and hearing parents and kids play. I never had one, and don’t have one now.

223

My Aunt bought a $10 piano at an estate sale and my kid loves banging the hell out of the keys. I have a fantastic picture of him stomping his tyrannosaurus all over the keys while roaring. But he was most interested in counting the keys.

Yeah, it’s a cool idea, a piano for every home. I think many people either don’t have the space or can’t afford it. If someone in the family already plays the piano then it may be a great addition to a home. But are you going to drop several thousand dollars on an instrument your kid may or may not wanna play?

224

My brother and I were horrified one Christmas when a truck showed up at our house to drop off the piano Grandma had bought us. We were 15 and 16, and though we’d both had music lessons before, were conspicuously lacking in talent or interest.
The piano’s at her house now. No one plays it.

225

When was this that pianos were ubiquitous? I only knew two households with pianos in my life - and the people living in them were born around 1910.

226

I think pianos were much more common in homes in days before recorded music was available, so if you wanted music at your party, the only way was for someone to play an instrument or sing.

227

I miss player pianos. Kids love player pianos.

228

My grandma had a piano and I can remember maybe three times it was played. After she passed, my dad took it and the grandfather clock. He tried for years and couldn’t give the piano away. He was not alone and it seemed everyone had a piano to give away.

229

This article gives a good historical account of the popularity of the home piano in early America. And, the piano was, of course, popular in Europe as well.

I grew up in an average suburban home in New Jersey in the 50s–60s and most of my neighbors had a piano in their home.

Most of the great composers and conductors in modern history cut their teeth learning piano at an early age. The reason is that the piano, unlike any other musical instrument, mimics an entire orchestra.

I love Mozart, but I prefer Beethoven. Beethoven straddled (and ushered in) the romantic era of music from the classical era. I attribute this to the higher dynamic range (and more octaves) of the evolving pianoforte compared to the limited dynamic range of the harpsichord that Mozart had at his disposal. Playing crescendo or decrescendo is not possible on a harpsichord.

One can only wonder what musical heights J.S. Bach and Mozart could have achieved, had they access to a modern Steinway & Sons piano. The mind boggles.

A generation later, the likes of Chopin and Liszt had access to pianofortes of even greater dynamic range (and more octaves) than even the great Beethoven, and their compositions reflect that.

My point is that budding musical geniuses need access to a musical instrument that can express their genius most fully, and that instrument, to date, is the modern piano.

Maybe in the future, an instrument will evolve with even greater expressiveness and range than the piano, but that instrument doesn’t exist, yet.

In the meantime, if you want to cultivate the next Mozart (or Beethoven, or Bach), put a piano in your living room, and give your kids piano lessons starting at age 3. They’ll probably experience a failure to launch, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

230

My Aunt and Uncle had a player piano and a baby grand.

231

That article doesn’t sound to me like pianos were ever ubiquitous - more popular than they are now, certainly. But there’s a reference to 8% of youth taking piano lessons in 1886 and this :

For a century the piano was America’s radio, phonograph, and television set, as well as its finishing school and its supreme status symbol

makes it seem that pianos were anything but ubiquitous - once something is ubiquitous , it’s no longer a status symbol.

232

I suppose it’s how one defines ubiquitous. I’m not the only one to use the term with regard to pianos in America.

Golden Age of the Piano - Wikipedia.

Indeed, not every household had a piano. So, let’s just say they were more ubiquitous in the past than they are now, and not just a status symbol for the rich. And, that is my point.

233

We had an upright piano in our house and the whole (1950’s-sized) family would gather around it and sing, mostly folk songs and the like. My mother played well. Nobody else ever could, although I do attribute my fearless singing to this practice. When she was in an auto collision and broke her neck when I was 15, one side was weakened such that she never could play again to her own satisfaction. The piano left. Later my father bought a player piano from which he derived a lot of pleasure. My twin nephews are both musical – one of them teaches music – and they play jazz duets on it when they visit him (if you don’t flip the programming switch it’s just a piano).

Re: the OP – singing around a family piano is something I wouldn’t mind seeing revived.

I knew a number of families with pianos. It was fairly common if anyone in the family was musical at all. This was early in the television era, and the habits of self-entertainment hadn’t completely died.

234

I think the word you mean is “common”. Ubiquitous means everywhere, universal. Technically speaking, things can’t be more ubiquitous.

235

Agree!
When I was a kid, the only person I knew that had a piano in their home was my great aunt. None of my friends or other relatives had pianos.

236

And this is the big problem with trying to revive pianos. My grandmother had a piano in her house, and my mom did take lessons as a child, but if you just don’t have the talent, you’re done. Particularly in an era when we can get music played by the best in the world on demand at any time. How many families are going to listen to Cousin Whoever mangle their favorite tunes, when iTunes is right there?

We put up with lesser talents when they were the best we could get, but this is no longer the case.

237

In most cases Cousin Whoever doesn’t have the musical potential to produce anything more pleasing to the ear than tomcats in heat fighting.

My concern is that the next household with a baby Mozart won’t have an instrument in the home to engage the child and help him develop into greatness. Unlike most jobs, becoming a world-class concert musician is something that needs to be developed from an early age.

238

Point taken. In informal usage, I just don’t think of ubiquitous as an absolute. I probably shouldn’t say, “such and such is more perfect than something else”, either. But I do.

239

Baby Mozarts don’t generally randomly appear in the general population. They tend to be children of musicians, like actual Mozart. They’ll have access and exposure. For the rest of us, if children express an interest or aptitude for music, there’s places like the Cleveland Music Settlement to develop it.

240

But, if Leopold Mozart didn’t have a harpsichord in the home when Wolfgang was young, would he have recognized his son’s potential? I’m not so sure he would have.