Are you saying there’s no point to amateur (school, community, etc.) bands or choirs or theater or athletics?
Leopold was an accomplished composer so he would have had a harpsichord in the home for professional reasons anyways. Now, are there potential Mozarts out there who don’t live in a musical home already? Sure, but prodigies tend to find a way.
No , but the point of amateur activities often is not to provide entertainment to others but to provide enjoyment to the participants. And even when there is some level of providing entertainment , it’s less expensive and/or easier to attend than the professional equivalent . I might attend a amateur community theater production if the tickets are $20 and in my neighborhood but not if the ticket price/travel required is comparable to a Broadway production. I might have Cousin Whoever play piano at my party if the alternative is hiring a professional musician - but not if I can play iTunes.
Obligatory nitpick: it’s female cats that go into heat. Not toms.
Tomcats fight whenever, and they’re always up for a good romp.
I would never choose recorded music over live music for an event unless the live performer was excruciatingly bad (the talentless rarely volunteer to perform in public anyway). The difference between music performed by a real person in your real space versus canned music coming out of a device is such that they can’t even be compared.
It is not just the living quality of the performance. It is also the social, community aspect. I am perhaps more aware of this because I sing, have for decades sung, in community and church choirs. While we enjoyed doing it – there is a unique joy in singing well with a group – people paid well to attend our concerts, which were at least semi-pro in quality, and generally sold out in quite large venues. These were audition choirs.
Church choirs are integral to Christian religious services. It is one of the last places where the tradition of community singing persists intact. The congregation is expected to sing the regular hymns with full voice no matter what their talent level, and the more gifted have separate practice where they learn more difficult pieces to fill the non-spoken parts of the service like the passing the collection plate and coming up for communion.
Not “No Point”, but surely much less of a point than they used to be. We still have to have some mechanism for finding the talented, after all. But there’s a difference between going out to see your nephew’s Grade 7 Band Concert once a year, and listening to him every weekend. And it’s really only the family that ever attends such concerts. How many people here go out of their way to see such performances if they’re not family members? The kids with at least some talent self-select for bands practice, and everyone else just plays recordings.
I think prodigies sometimes find a way, but not always. Not without being discovered and groomed.
I wasn’t at the Mozart home when Wolfgang was young (too bratty for me), but I imagine his introduction to music went something like this:
The young child heard his older sister Nannerl playing chopsticks on the family harpsichord and thought, I can do better than that!
Interest piqued, the 3 year old lad climbed atop the bench and plinked out a few simple melodies, followed a few minutes later by a rough draft of Eine kleine Nachtmusik. Leopold’s ears picked up.
Leopold [thinking]: Hmm, forget about putting this kid in little league baseball, he can make me some serious moolah playing keyboard.
Wolfgang then spent years doing finger exercises 8 hours a day until his fingers bled.
And so, a star was born.
Leopold was indeed an accomplished musician in his own right, but if he didn’t bring his work home with him (i.e. no musical instruments in the Mozart home), Wolfgang may never have been discovered, nor found his way.
I may have got some of the details wrong. 
True, but caterwauling is too difficult to spell.
I do the ones in The Guardian, several years’ worth of which are archived. I’m working on the November 29, 2022 Cryptic crossword No 28,928 right now. What I like about working them online is that you can check your answers instantly without going to the back of the book and inadvertently seeing the solution to a puzzle you haven’t yet started to solve. I’ve learned some cricket terminology and British politicians’ names, among other things, from this diversion.
Sure, but the same is true for absolutely every skill that exists. But homes can’t have every apparatus for every skill in existence on the off chance that someone in that home will turn out to be amazing at it if given exposure and groomed and trained for it. So a could-have-been great musician will never be so. True also for the could-have-been painter the could-have-been marble carver and the could-have-been glass blower and the could-have-been wine-maker and so forth and so on.
Sure, there are many professions and artistic endeavors that require many years of practice, dedication, and development of complex muscle memory, but I can’t think of any that benefit more from starting at a very young age as do world-class virtuosos and composers of serious music. Most of the great virtuosos and composers whose biographies I read, started playing an instrument before age 9, some much younger. There are of course exceptions, but they are…the exception.
An older child or teenager has some agency over their life. In many cases, they can influence their parents, or teachers to steer them in the direction of their heartfelt genius. A young child doesn’t have that agency, they’re wholly dependent on others to recognize their genius, and provide what they need to cultivate it. If there is no musical instrument in the house, neither the child nor the parent may recognize the potential talent. Until it’s too late.
Beethoven began playing piano at age 5. Sure, maybe a 14-year-old Ludwig could have drifted into a piano store, discovered his love and talent for music, and become a successful musician, starting relatively late with lessons. But, then again maybe he wouldn’t, or at least he may not have attained the heights that he did.
The world would be a less colorful place to live with a mediocre Mozart, a so-so Beethoven, a listless Lizst, a fair-to-middling Chopin…or a hum-drum Yuga Wang (a recognized virtuoso by age 9)
A painter, a glass blower, or a candlestick maker doesn’t need to begin studying their craft before age 10 (and a 10 year old winemaker may result in a visit from Child Protective Services), but a creator of serious music should.
I simply strongly disagree. A creator of “serious music” can start and be great, even at a later age. I also don’t think musical accomplishment is the be all end all of life - a child should have a childhood, rather than a professional’s training schedule. And even the ones that don’t end up great musicians may end up doing other things that are even greater (though I suppose some think there is nothing greater) and more fulfilling to them personally.
And I still say the same applies to sports and painters (that you didn’t mention) and numerous other things. Yes, starting earlier does give an advantage. That doesn’t mean they should start earlier. That’s a personal choice and,yes, a result of circumstance and opportunity. And, even if they should start earlier, you’re saying that the one-in-thousand-chance of a serious musician coming out of a certain circumstance means every single household (or 20% at least, I guess?) should have something they don’t want, don’t need, and don’t use. Just in case one of their kids happens to have a natural talent for something. Which is just ridiculous to me.
And, of course, as previously mentioned, historically the vast majority of pianos did not serve this purpose - they were just entertainment when recorded music wasn’t available. They had purpose for the ordinary (well, middle-class, anyway) household. That’s how things get to be common - because people use them or want them. A child is unlikely to discover their talent for it if the piano is just a piece of furniture in the room - which is exactly what it would be if it was common in households today with nothing else changing. If you want the entire culture to change so that everyone of a certain class learns piano (and then plays in adulthood) regardless of whether they like it or not, that’s a different thing altogether.
Music/instrument lessons in school from a young age would be more likely to accomplish your goal. Admittedly, getting a kid to love something in school is less easy. Certainly it would be lessons for the masses, not the talented. But for early exposure and discovery (which they’d then pursue with private lessons or individual effort), it would work much better than just having the instrument in the home.
Ballet training and gymnastics also benefit from starting at a young age.
But there are consequences to mental and emotional health.
I simply strongly X strongly disagree 
. I don’t believe a creator of “”serious”” music can start late in life.
But, that’s neither here, nor there. You do however, introduce an interesting question worthy of discussion, and one that I have pondered quite a bit: Does benefit to mankind justify suffering of an individual?
Mozart and Beethoven (and many other geniuses) led very torturous lives. They gave much, much more to human civilization than they received in return. Much of their lives were miserable. But, their creations will enhance humankind…forever.
Would they have led happier lives without music? I don’t know. But, I suspect they (and many other geniuses) were on the autistic spectrum, and may have been even more miserable without music (or, whatever their field of genius). Hard to say. It pains me to think about.
The best we can do is to enjoy the fruits of their labor and silently thank them for the gift they gave us. I do that every day.
I still think people singing around a piano is more important than creating virtuosos. The modern fascination with great achievements without any interest in the ordinary commonplace pleasure in non-competitive participation, is in my opinion a disease.
And it’s exacerbated by the fact that the great achievements are so ubiquitously (literal usage! :D) available for passive consumption as spectators. You can spend all your time 24/7 spectating the world’s virtuosos in music, sports, and all other forms of performance.
To be fair, though, there seems to be some evidence that higher percentages of people nowadays have at least experimented with musical performance.
So I’m not convinced that we’re in danger of getting stuck in a cultural trap of passive spectatorship in the arts. ISTM that “low-level spectatorship”, like seeing YouTube videos of non-famous performers recording in their living room or wherever at a level that’s impressive but not virtuosic, tends to inspire attempts at emulation. Just as seeing your neighbor or classmate get praised for her piano-playing in person at a local dinner party used to do, I suppose.
Ideally, kind of in between. The short ones made for men look too stubby to me, while anything much longer than 6" is ostentatious, tacky and hard to handle gracefully.
I currently have the upright piano that has been in our family for nearly 100 years. It is out of tune, and won’t hold a tune (the piano tuner has tried), but that makes it all the more fun to play when I play ragtimes.
My mother could play beautifully, and wanted my sister and I to take lessons. I wanted to, but Sis didn’t. Dad couldn’t play at all. Anyway, I ended up taking six or seven years of piano lessons, and the only reason I stopped was because my piano teacher was the crabby old lady kind, who thought she could reinforce lessons by rapping a ruler across my knuckles if I hit a wrong note.
But by that time, I was in high school, and in the school band, playing a trombone. I ended up playing in the brass section of a garage R&B band. We never got anywhere, but we had a lot of fun trying.
Sis displayed no interest in making music.
On my own, I discovered woodwinds, specifically the flute. I taught myself as much as I could, until it became apparent I needed lessons. So I ended up taking classical flute lessons up until I was in my 30s. I’d appear on stage with bar bands, playing my flute. And still, Sis displayed no interest in making music.
So it was a surprise to me that one day, when I was at his place, Dad told me that he was planning to give the family piano to Sis.
Why? Because she was married and had kids and would want to get them into music. Note that my brother-in-law had no musical training.
My counterargument: "Dad, Sis didn’t care for piano lessons, her husband has never studied music, why do you think Sis would want to get her kids into piano, when neither Sis nor BIL care about music? Look at me: I play piano, flute, trombone, and Celtic percussion. Why would I not want the family piano, when Sis clearly doesn’t want it?
“But she’s got kids. And you don’t. And all kids take piano, right?”
No, Dad. They don’t. Not nowadays. And to this day, my nephews (Sis’s kids) have no knowledge of how to make music, and have demonstrated no interest in trying to.
In the end, Dad agreed that I deserved the family piano. Sis had no objection. That dear old piano is in my living room right now, and it is so much fun to play that same instrument that I did so many years before. And the ragtime tunes are as much fun to play as they ever were.
The point is that my Dad said, “And all kids take piano, right?” Most of them did in our neighbourhood, and thus, most of the homes with kids in our neighbourhood had a piano.
I’ve made a rule for myself that anytime I have to Google an answer, I have to learn about the thing I’m looking up. At least that way there’s an educational outcome to my cheating.
I already mentioned Mozart. Beethoven’s father was a musician, teacher, and singer. Lizst’s father played the piano, violin, cello, and guitar for the court of Prince Nikolaus II, and was a music instructor. Chopin’s father played the flute and violin, and his mother was a piano instructor. Yuga Wang’s father is a professional percussionist. Has there been any musical prodigies who came from non-professional musical households that happened to keep a piano in the home? (Genuinely curious). I think the presence of musician parents has a far greater impact than just having instruments available in the home.
I agree with you that high-level musical ability has to start and be nurtured from a young age. More importantly, they have to stick with it and undergo intense instruction and practice from that young age all the way into adulthood, which is more likely to happen if you grow up in a family of musicians.