UPRIGHT PIANOS

      Several months ago I met my neighbor on the street and we had our usual visit. She told me that she had been trying to sell her piano. Now, she had one of the newer pianos which was not as high as the older ones.  She gave up trying to sell the piano as no one was interested. She couldn't even get an offer on a ridiculously low price. Then she decided to give it away as she just wanted it out of her house. She had one person express interest but the person never came back. What's her only option? Pay to have it taken to the dump.

     Now I thought this was a rather sad situation that a perfectly good instrument would be thrown in the garbage.

     I was thinking that I sold my piano 20 years ago and how lucky I was to sell it.

     Now yesterday I was listening to a documentary on pianos. Yes the older pianos cannot be traded anymore. They were interviewing a piano technician. Many people come to him for help to sell their piano. They want to leave the piano with him. He has to refuse their pianos as he knows he won't find a buyer and he's left with the expense of disposal. He explained that many pianos are about 100 years old and they are at the end of their life. The wood in them has lost it's strength and warped. The cost of repair would be enormous and then you still have an old piano.

    Now I thought of the last 150 years when people had pianos and enjoyed music in their homes. I thought of all the children who took piano lessons and learned to play. I also thought about all those kids who took lessons and didn't learn anything. The reason I bought my piano was so that my kids could take piano lessons. One of them learned to play well and played after lessons were over. The other one did not touch the piano after the last lesson. So one learned to play piano and one learned nothing.

     In my family home we had a piano and my parents had the idea to give us piano lessons. I wasn't given piano lessons as we could seldom get to town in the winter. The other two were given lessons and learned very little.

     So it's the end of a long music tradition.

     Kids today take band and learn band instruments.

      How about you? Did you take piano lessons? Did you learn anything.

Many of the old pianos were very ornate as this one that I found on the internet.