What killed the piano?

[cuberdrift]

I get the impression that the decline of the Jazz era (late 1950's or so) heralded the decline of the piano as a mainstream instrument. How wrong or right would this assumption be?

Obviously the height could be ascribed to the Romantic period, with people like Liszt, Chopin, etc  being the foremost figures behind the instrument's popularity, at least in industrialized Western Europe.

Nearly every single middle class family would have had some familiarity with the tunes at the time. Lower class saloons would also have had downgraded honky tonks.

American jazz and popular music only expanded the capabilities of the piano to include West African syncopation, with ragtime composers introducing these "slave" genres as possibly serious music. Boogie woogie, stride, swing, etc. players developed a style independent from, even if influenced by, Western classical music with arguably comparable heights of virtuosity and sophistication.

As electric guitars and synthesizers entered into the foray though, it seems as if piano had finally lost its coolness. Instead of being a rock star like Rachmaninoff or Anton Rubinstein back in the day, you were seen as old hat, a classical player, etc.

Today just the thought of owning a piano gives people the impression that you are a person of wealth and taste.

What factors can be pinpointed to contributing to the falling out of fashion of this pinnacle of industrial age musical development?

[kosulin]

Pianos are big and expensive.
Wide availability of recorded music, add to this popularity of very mobile and inexpensive equipment for a guitar band, made the piano much less desired.

[lostinidlewonder]

Nothing killed it, more people than ever before are learning it. Tastes change with the times, we are moving further from the "classical" period though we still appreciate it. In my teaching I am seeing more and more engaging with 21st century music, this is quite normal. Popular videos of piano also play newer genres. Piano needs to embrace new music or it will die, people need to feel engaged and connected to music rather than uphold traditions, a lesson many teachers should embrace too.

[lelle]

I wonder how what the difference is if you compare how many households in the past had a piano 100 years ago vs if you compare how many households have a piano or a digital piano today?

You also have to consider that before radio ortelevision or record players (which were a luxury item), you needed to have a physical instrument in your house that you or someone else played on to consume music.

The piano was also replaced by the electric guitar as the mainstream instrument of choice for a long time.

These days, mainstream music incorporates everything from electric guitar to piano to electronical instruments / synths.

So in short, tastes have changed and diversified. That does not bother me.

[thorn]

Nothing killed it, more people than ever before are learning it. Tastes change with the times, we are moving further from the "classical" period though we still appreciate it. In my teaching I am seeing more and more engaging with 21st century music much more, this is quite normal. Popular videos of piano also play newer genres. Piano needs to embrace new music or it will die, people need to feel engaged and connected to music rather than uphold traditions, a lesson many teachers should embrace too.

I completely agree. It's so important to use the active voice "how can we engage and connect people with piano music" vs. sitting passively teaching and playing the same pieces in the same contexts and complaining into our echo chambers that less people are interested in this way of doing things nowadays.

It's not that *piano* is declining, it's that *classical* piano needs to realise we're not in the 19th c. anymore. On a wider social level most are disenchanted with the industrial age message that anyone can make it to the top if they just work hard enough (the conservatory system evolved from and continues to embody this ideal). On the flip side 21st c people are used to having anything they want asap. So they don't want to work through hundreds of pieces they find boring to be good enough to learn Winter Wind, they want to play it NOW for instant "likes" online. Particularly not if they can just teach themselves something from Disney or a video game that would also gain them said online "like" (no disrespect btw, I'm not much of a Disney fan but love video game music myself!)

So yeah, we need to recognise the reality of the situation- piano is not dying but classical music needs to do more to sell itself rather than blindly trusting the reputations of Bach, Beethoven etc speak for themselves.

[lostinidlewonder]

I completely agree. It's so important to use the active voice "how can we engage and connect people with piano music" vs. sitting passively teaching and playing the same pieces in the same contexts and complaining into our echo chambers that less people are interested in this way of doing things nowadays.

It's not that *piano* is declining, it's that *classical* piano needs to realise we're not in the 19th c. anymore. On a wider social level most are disenchanted with the industrial age message that anyone can make it to the top if they just work hard enough (the conservatory system evolved from and continues to embody this ideal). On the flip side 21st c people are used to having anything they want asap. So they don't want to work through hundreds of pieces they find boring to be good enough to learn Winter Wind, they want to play it NOW for instant "likes" online. Particularly not if they can just teach themselves something from Disney or a video game that would also gain them said online "like" (no disrespect btw, I'm not much of a Disney fan but love video game music myself!)

So yeah, we need to recognise the reality of the situation- piano is not dying but classical music needs to do more to sell itself rather than blindly trusting the reputations of Bach, Beethoven etc speak for themselves.

Couldn't have said it better! I also love Video game music I find myself visiting places like ichigos.com as much as I do imslp.org.

[thorn]

Couldn't have said it better! I also love Video game music I find myself visiting places like ichigos.com as much as I do imslp.org.

Ichigos! That's a blast from the past, I was on their forum in the early 2000s (same username) we probably crossed paths there too.

[cuberdrift]

Classical music does not need to change or sell itself.

[pianistavt]

It's not that *piano* is declining, it's that *classical* piano needs to realise we're not in the 19th c. anymore. On a wider social level most are disenchanted with the industrial age message that anyone can make it to the top if they just work hard enough (the conservatory system evolved from and continues to embody this ideal).

Unless you are a teacher and can influence (and even then, you're roped into a pedagogical school of thought), we can only make personal choices about what we do, what we support.   Personally, I mostly play music from the 20th c. forward, with an exception made for Chopin, due to his genius. I also improvise, which I think is a unwisely neglected pursuit in piano pedagogy.  In social media discussions, I make the point that piano pedagogy and performing are too backward looking, too stuck in the established ouevre.  Thank god for Marc Andre Hamelin, may he become the blueprint for the concert pianist of the future.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

Imo, piano died because people stopped caring about the music and started caring about the artist. For example, I know plenty of "swifties" who hate her music but listen to it because they like her as a person. With piano, you can't see or hear the composer, which isn't familiar for the younger generations. Cognitive easement, psychology stuff, etc. and now 2/3rds of kids hate classical music as a whole despite having heard 0-2 pieces in their entire life. For example, if I show someone a really good piece like Un Sospiro without telling them who made it and what time period it was, they usually love it. But the second I say Liszt wrote it in the late 1840s, they come full circle and say it's the worst thing they ever heard.

Basically, kids only care about who wrote the song, not how good the music is. Since teenagers are known for hating things that were liked by the older generations, they hate classical music. That's what doomed the piano in my eyes.

[transitional]

Basically, kids only care about who wrote the song, not how good the music is. Since teenagers are known for hating things that were liked by the older generations, they hate classical music. That's what doomed the piano in my eyes.

While I wouldn't turn this into so much of a generalization, I basically agree. People want consistency with what to follow, and there is nothing "trendy" about listening to something 100+ years old. Additionally, I think people find other values in music and want everything to have words so it can have a more obvious symbolic meaning, which also fragments the boundaries of language even more (this is a different topic, but why do people in America basically only listen to English songs?) I get that people enjoy different genres that stretch the boundaries of music and increase enjoyment - like I rather enjoy "new" sounds of hip-hop every time I hear it, it just doesn't carry a very deep message to me, but this is all very personal. In the end, it's essentially what you make of music.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I think people find other values in music and want everything to have words so it can have a more obvious symbolic meaning...

I agree with most of your posts, but this is just wrong in my experience. People care nothing about the words or the music; just about who wrote it and what period of time they were from.

[pianistavt]

I get the impression that the decline of the Jazz era (late 1950's or so) heralded the decline of the piano as a mainstream instrument. How wrong or right would this assumption be?
Obviously the height could be ascribed to the Romantic period, with people like Liszt, Chopin, etc  being the foremost figures behind the instrument's popularity, at least in industrialized Western Europe.
Nearly every single middle class family would have had some familiarity with the tunes at the time. Lower class saloons would also have had downgraded honky tonks.
American jazz and popular music only expanded the capabilities of the piano to include West African syncopation, with ragtime composers introducing these "slave" genres as possibly serious music. Boogie woogie, stride, swing, etc. players developed a style independent from, even if influenced by, Western classical music with arguably comparable heights of virtuosity and sophistication.
As electric guitars and synthesizers entered into the foray though, it seems as if piano had finally lost its coolness. Instead of being a rock star like Rachmaninoff or Anton Rubinstein back in the day, you were seen as old hat, a classical player, etc.
Today just the thought of owning a piano gives people the impression that you are a person of wealth and taste.
What factors can be pinpointed to contributing to the falling out of fashion of this pinnacle of industrial age musical development?

I wonder if the decline of the piano has the same general trend as the decline of classical "art" music in general, or does it have a different history?

Also, does the history of classical music diverge between America and Europe with the advent of the radio?  Ragtime, early jazz, popular music had taken a bigger hold in America in the 2-3 decades leading up to commercial radio (1920) compared to Europe; when radio launched people were eager to hear this music.  Classical music has always been stronger in Europe than America, and still is.  Why not?  These composers are part of their national history and pride, the governments support classical music.

Another question on my mind is what happened to the impetus to create beautiful and artistic music?  Did something change in the 20th century, or is our view of the prior 2 centuries skewed?  Some say WWI had profound changes on all of the western world, including the fall of the European aristocracy, families of great wealth - - perhaps without patronage the fostering of art, including art music, fell dramatically?

Surely some historians have tried to answer these questions...  if anyone has references to books or websites, please post.

[thorn]

Patronage has always been the single biggest question. What this looks like varies dramatically across time and place- from neolithic shamans to 21st c. influencers no-one can make a living from music without powerful supporters. This doesn't have to be a person- social media can cancel people faster than any king could have had them executed, and as you say national heritage/pride is another non-human supporter. That's why I said above that classical music needs to learn how to sell itself in new contexts.

And I don't personally see WW1 the turning point. We forget the rise of the Victorian middle class, and the propagation of those ideals through the British Empire (both in colonies and in economic competitors like the US). The majority of classical music debates we still have today concern things that started in this era, not post-1914: private music education vs. public, the classical/popular music divide, the Romantic/20th c. divide, economic barriers, gender barriers, racial barriers etc.

How does this relate to people's desire to create "beautiful and artistic music"? Well these middle class entrepreneurs founded conservatories and built concert halls which institutionalised art music- the 'right' way to play and compose, the 'right' repertoire to study to achieve this etc. While some young composers were moulded by this and composed 'correctly', others were inspired by industrial ideals of invention and modernity (Debussy famously said the age of the airplane deserves its own music, for example)  and composers beyond the old Paris/Vienna cultural centers started asserting national pride through local folk music etc. The less composers conformed, the less likely other classical musicians (both then and now) are to view their music as "beautiful and artistic". 

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Classical music does not need to change or sell itself.

Why not?