Piano still has a key role

As Lisa Boone reports this week, more recession-battered homeowners are trying to sell their furnishings for cash. So many pianos are hitting the auction market you may be able to pick one up for as little as $500. (See story above.)

The acoustic piano’s waning popularity in U.S. households -- the subject of the Home section’s May 16 centerpiece cover story -- prompted much reaction from readers lamenting the decline.

Ruth Honer of Santa Ana wrote to say that she was the “mean mom” who made her kids take at least five years of music lessons. One daughter chose the harp, her son picked alto saxophone and a younger daughter selected piano. Music taught them all life lessons. Writes Honer:

“They have grace under pressure. They know that when mistakes happen, just go to the next note, as we do in life.”

Allison Banks Herbert of Dana Point said her girls, ages 6 and 8, are involved in so many activities that they are expected to practice only 15 minutes a day.

“Practicing her songs is usually the first thing that our older daughter does after she gets ready for school in the morning and the first thing our younger daughter does when she gets in the door after school,” Herbert wrote.

If she doesn’t hear practicing, she threatens to end the lessons.

“They love their teacher so much that they would rather stop their beloved sports before that happens,” Herbert said, adding that she and her husband “feel that it’s not the piano that’s out of date but the way that many teachers teach their lessons.”

Reader Kent Adamson responded by e-mail immediately after the story appeared:

“The very day your article was published, several of my daughter Joelle’s San Clemente high school friends gathered in our home, employing the piano, guitars, vocals and recording equipment as they worked to put together a musical film,” he wrote -- proof that the piano is not mere decoration or symbol of affluence but, rather, “life enrichment.”