A New Piano for the New Year
A New Piano for the Year
The birth of a new year represents a clean slate and boundless potential. For many families, better management of time and pursuing quality bonding activities is found on the proverbial list of new year’s resolutions. What better way to begin a new chapter—a new year—than purchasing a piano for your home?
A Survey of Music Making in the Past
Long before telephones or the advent of radio, Western families entertained themselves with domestic music making. From the noblest or aristocracy to the humblest peasant, the ability for a family to produce children with musical abilities, particularly young girls who could play the piano, was a skill essential as literacy or arithmetic. Families with advanced musicians often purchased splendid instruments, suitable for the realization of the finest repertoire composed by leading virtuosos. Such homes became epicenters for communities and featured an important genre of music performance called the house concert. Franz Schubert and Beethoven often performed in such modest yet prestigious Viennese house concert programs.
While today music making has shifted towards purely receiving and becoming fairly passive rather than a disciplined activity, the importance of classical music, especially from a cultural perspective, cannot afford to be be under looked. Homes with children who learn to play the piano and become proficient in playing and note reading boast greater discipline, higher test scores, and significantly better management skills than their non-musically inclined peers. From an ethical standpoint, classical music and the fine arts represent the best in culture and help humans to realize the depth of humanity and in turn become more appreciative of their existence and being. Plato argued that music fundamentally shaped the behavior of people for good or bad, which is why the disciple of music throughout antiquity to the modern age was crucial to Western cultural identity.
Purchasing a piano is a crucial step in fostering culture and exalting the fine arts in your home, for both your children and yourselves. No matter your budget or spacial accommodations, any piano is better than no piano. And you can be confident that the pianos found at Stilwell Pianos represent the best in quality and value.