"Digital" pianos :was No subject

[Israel Stein]

At 06:19 AM 1/18/2008, Peter Joris wrote:
>Hi Lorenzo,
>
>you are not the only one getting a sad feeling thinking of the 
>progress a digital piano makes both in business and quality. A lot 
>of people these days look at the price tag when choosing a piano for 
>the daughter who starts piano lessons. they get a few options:
>
>1. Pay a horrible amount of money for a new quality piano
>2. Pay an more or less affordable price for a secondhand quality piano.
>3. Get a shiny new Chinese or the sort of piano cheap
>3. Pay the same as for the Chinese piano, get it also new, shiny and 
>it even sounds so much better than that acoustic piano. and guess 
>what no tunings or maintenance. and when the daughter is not that 
>talented in the beginning you get the cheap headphones for free with 
>the piano.....
>
>I see it happen so often that it is scary.

Peter and all,

Well, you can join a long line of musicians and craftsmen who mourned 
the passing of a familiar and beloved musical technology being 
supplanted by a newer one. We are living during a technological 
paradigm shift - and there were dozens in past centuries that caused 
upheavals in music. We like to see them as "progress", but there is 
plenty evidence that the changes were resisted by those who had a 
stake in the older technology. And the lesson is - those who do not 
learn from history are bound to repeat it.

Look at the period between the early 1700s - when the piano first 
burst onto the northern European scene - and the late 1700-early 1800 
when it came into its own as a musical instrument. Initially it was 
seen - and played - as if it was basically a new sort of harpsichord. 
It was initially called a "Gravicembalo col piano e forte" - a 
harpsichord with loud and soft. Only later did the "piano e forte" 
became the primary identifier. It was initially deemed a musical toy 
- absolutely incapable of matching the harpsichord in terms of 
agility and expression - by no less a figure than JS Bach, when 
visiting his son CPE at the court of Frederick the Great in Bonn. 
Emperor Fred - being a skilled musical amateur - bought twenty of 
them as the "newest thing" - and old Johann Sebastian deemed them 
unplayable. Years later they were found abandoned and in disrepair 
lying around in various corners of the palace - while the court 
continued enjoying the sound of the harpsichords.

In his youth, Mozart rejected the piano too - as an unwieldy and 
undependable instrument. Only after he left Saltzburg and lived on 
his own in Vienna did he find a piano builder whose instruments could 
equal the harpsichord in agility and dependability - Johann Andreas 
Stein - and wrote his father about this great discovery. (Being the 
cad that he was, Wolfie then proceeded to buy his own instrument from 
Stein's competitor Anton Walter - but that's another story..)

Fast forward to the end of the century - and you see harpsichord 
builders fighting the losing battle to compete with the now 
triumphant piano by trying to match its capabilities. You see huge 
English harpsichords with louvered lids trying to match the power of 
the piano (which wasn't all that powerful just yet) and the 
capability for dynamics - by having louvers on the lid that could 
open and shut, to let out more or less sound. The smart builders 
simply learned how to build pianos - so the Tschudi harpsichord firm 
became Broadwood pianos (I think John Broadwood married Tschudi's 
daughter and took over management) and the Silbermann harpsichord and 
organ firm became Streicher pianos (Silbermann's daughter Nanette - 
who built the pianos - married Adolf Streicher who ran the front 
office). But the piano was still being played as if it was a 
different kind of harpsichord - with rather gentle dynamics as sort 
of a novelty. It wasn't until Beethoven that its full capabilities 
were utilized.

And you can see the same thing happening when oboes and bassoons 
replaced shawms and curtals, or when metal flutes supplanted wooden 
ones - a new technology replaces the old, and those who try to hang 
on to the old, lose out. Musical tastes have changed, are changing 
and will change, and often enough the change is driven - or assisted 
by - technological change.

So does that mean that the piano is dead? No. Our time is 
fundamentally different from earlier times in that we appreciate the 
musical tastes of past eras. Until the mid 1800's old music was dead 
music - nobody played it and nobody wanted to hear it. It was 
Mendelssohn and his contemporaries who developed the idea that music 
of the past is worthwhile and ought to be preserved and performed. 
And this idea persists today - to the point that older music, older 
musical styles and older instruments are being revived and 
appreciated. And so we don't cast away the old for the new - it 
remains alongside the latest thing - but is relegated to smaller 
circles of those who appreciate it.

The electronic instrument - whatever you want to call it - is at the 
beginning of its career. And it is essentially being used as a 
substitute for the piano (just like the piano was vis-a-vis its 
predecessor)  It has pretty much replaced the piano in the popular 
musical genres (except when the acoustic piano is used for visual 
rather than musical effect) but more serious musicians and composers 
have not even begun to scratch the surface of its capabilities. When 
music that is specifically idiomatic to the electronic instrument 
becomes the norm - then it will have come into its own. I give it 
20-30 years. In the meantime the piano will be relegated to a niche - 
those who are sensitive enough to appreciate the unique 
characteristics of acoustic pianos and those who want it as an item 
of conspicuous consumption. It will more and more become the province 
of musicians specializing in acoustic instruments and Yuppies who 
want a $100,000 instrument in their mansion. The low end acoustic 
piano (especially the used one)  is on its way down - if not out.

Now, we old dogs who will be retiring or kicking the bucket within 
the next 10-15 years don't have to worry about it. You young 
whippersnappers just entering the field should keep your eyes wide 
open - that old junker that was in the past bread-and-butter for the 
beginners is not going to be there much longer, and I guarantee you 
that those shiny new Chinese pianos are not going to be serviced 
frequently enough to support all of you 20-30 years down the road. If 
you expect to be making a living at this past 2025 or so, you are 
going to need to follow the advice so often heard from David Andersen 
and get into the high end of the business - because that's the end 
that is going to survive. The acoustical musicians and the Yuppies. 
So perhaps you need to start thinking now about how you are going to 
develop the tuning, technical, voicing and promotion skills needed to 
service that market - because the generic machine tuning and the 
paint-by-numbers regulation are not going to cut it in that universe...

Israel Stein