This past Sunday in my church, Traders Point, our preacher, Aaron, brought up an interesting fact about pianos and when they were used in churches. Our discussion was about not letting unnecessary disputes cause divisions within the church and how it is more important to just bring everyone together. This leads him to mention how there was a big division between people who went to church and people who went to Saloons due to the dispute about whether or not God would still love them for drinking alcohol. In an effort to combine the two divisions, the church decided to begin using pianos in their services. This was a marked deal because pianos were only found in Saloons and church go-ers originally thought therefore the piano was the devil’s instrument and had no place in the church. Even more interesting, the Christian hymns that were used at the time were made from old bar tunes to make the non-Christians more familiar with the music being played.
When this discussion came up on Sunday, I thought it was extremely interesting and would make for a great blog post. In an attempt to further confirm this, I began doing some research to see what I could find in support. The closest thing I was able to find was from Greg Howlett (link: https://greghowlett.com/blog/music-philosophy/102209.aspx) and he only mentioned that organs were only used in churches until the late 1800s because pianos seemed to be unfit for church. I will continue to look more into this discussion and try to find some more evidence, however, I just wanted to share this interesting factoid I learned in church that seemed to have a great fit for this class.