Op-Ed: Piano playing soon becoming a commodity for professional pianists only

The piano, once the center of pride of the family, has become a mute piece of furniture in many homes. Piano playing, a skill achieved by patience and concentration, returns sounds and rewards according to experience and persistence. All this craft has in recent generations been replaced by the use of a home entertainment system, where the only necessary skill to access wonderment is reasonable dexterity of the remote control. It is sad to compare between these two drastically different maneuvers of seeming joy and happiness. While the former is a highly active form of expression at all levels, the latter merely requires one press of a button that triggers hours of passive entertainment. It is hard to believe that so much less requirement would ever result in even remotely similar satisfaction.

Why are we becoming increasingly "professional" in everything? Food is seldom if ever cooked in many homes today, leading to take-outs and even obesity at an epidemic scale. That's a separate, but loosely related, discussion about human health, physical and mental, respectively. Further, athletes are evermore striving for a professional career, whereas amateur exercise has been pushed to treadmills and à la carte-style muscle development, and often exists only due to necessity, not for enjoyment. In music, what used to be amateur playing and singing at home, is replaced by watching videos, and a sing-a-long of a few lines of the refrain riffs while imitating the movements of the video.

Is technology and preprogrammed entertainment drowning us into dumbness? Twenty-five years ago, when my contemporary friends would rave the latest VCRs and micro computers, my teenager punch line used to be: "What happens when the power goes out? With what do you occupy yourselves then?" I do not consider this as a full circumscription of the issue anymore. Assistance by electronics can be beneficial in any context, but especially back then much of the "electronic entertainment activity" was still in its infancy, and thus more "geeky" and less of any human developmental value. Unfortunately, it seems like entertainment is still superseding learning as a preference with the new emerging gadgets.

Danielle Baldassini's article "The changing role of the piano" (Blast Magazine, March 1, 2010), states: "Yet while these staggering numbers [of declining sales of pianos] may lead some to believe that the piano's role in society is becoming non-existent, it will never be replaced in classical and jazz music. And while many pianos across America are suffering the dreaded fate of serving as mere pieces of furniture, they are still hugely popular first instruments for children. While this instrument's importance in family homes may be diminishing, its role in society is actually just shifting to fit a smaller niche of professional musicians and music enthusiasts."

It is understandable that many music professionals, similarly to Baldassini, defend the position of the piano in society. Although the piano is a good tool for musical activity, it is only a tool. The important factor is not if the piano industry will survive, but whether the amateur activity triggered by playing a piano, which has proven to enhance people's happiness and relax them from daily stress, will survive. As Baldassini says: "Today, many of those pianos - their pedals and keys now cloaked in cobwebs and dust - stand silent", if there are only professional pianists, much of the additional benefits, from finger dexterity to superior multitasking, will be a commodity for professional pianists only. Take it as a complete loss of Vitamin P for everyone else, which cannot be replaced by a pill, or especially the home entertainment system.