In the introduction to Engaging Art: The Next Great
Transformation of America’s Cultural Life, former NEA chair and
current interim Chair Bill Ivey writes about piano sales in
1909: 364,545, “an impressive total in a country with a
population of less than 100 million.” By 1934, “sales had
plunged to just over 34,000 instruments.” Yes, you read that
correctly: over a 90% drop in sales in twenty-five years. What
had happened? Phonographs, radios and movies. “Through much of
the nineteenth century,” Ivey writes, “the piano had served as
the nation’s archetypal cultural hearth, and images of a family
sing or an informal after-dinner performance of a classical
piece by a young music student were staples of American
domesticity. Then, the ability to sing or play music and, for
that matter, drawing and the writing and recitation of poetry
were considered everyday skills, integrated into family life as
thoroughly as sewing or the canning of autumn garden produce.”
Music education embraced this trend, “following the r