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The British believe in maintaining tradition .

Like organ scholars in university colleges (mainly Oxbridge) - the ones which have their own chapels of course - as well as collegiate choirs. The high school I attended had (and still has) two pipe organs - a huge one in the main assembly hall, where all students & teachers assemble every morning prior to classes, and another smaller one in the chapel, where Sunday services are held, and where most school concerts take place.

Someone has to play the organs to accompany the hymn singing, so when the Organist and Master of the Choristers (our choirmaster, who is also the Head of Music) is not present, the organist is the organ scholar.

Incidentally, one of our previous Prime Ministers was once an organ scholar at Oxford, though unlike Dudley Moore, he read Politics there, not Music.

Hahahaha!!

Just the idea that so many brain areas are involved in playing the piano. And actually, many times it does feel like a true brain work-out.

We had to make do with a 9-6 Bluthner . . . .

We had to make do with no-name uprights for the choir room, band/orchestra hall and auditorium. No grand pianos nor organs of any flavor (just s middle class school).

Lest anyone thinks that I went to a posh "public school" (i.e. private school) like Eton, the high school I went to was just an ordinary (predominantly middle-class) "grammar school".

The reason why it has pipe organs etc is because it's a very old & huge institution (circa 1800 ), and I can attest that the dormitories were pretty cold in the winter for the boarders like me. Maybe the windows are now double-glazed and the heating and insulation has been upgraded......

When I was there, it acquired its first grand piano (a seven-foot Yamaha), which was put in the chapel. Our best music student blessed it by performing Liszt's Dante Sonata and Beethoven's Appassionata on it in a public concert, which helped to raise funds to pay for it. It's probably still the only grand piano in the school.

P.S. I just read about the school on Wiki, and discovered that its Chapel Choir (which has won several competitions) - of which I was once a member - had sung in Carnegie Hall as well as Westminster Abbey. Unfortunately, I was no longer a student at the time, otherwise I could tell everyone I'd performed in Carnegie Hall .

Yeah, it's crazy how much is going on at once!

And I thought our grammar School was posh . . . everyone else did, too. It rapidly became a Comprehensive!

My old alma mater could never possibly turn comprehensive.

Comprehensive students would never deign to walk half a mile from one end of the school to the other: the distance needed to safely separate the boys from the girls - the ones who were boarding, that is - to ensure no hanky-panky could (inadvertently, of course) occur. No sheds to hide in between either - just a big expanse of concrete and grass. But we in the know know of hidden dark corridors in the main building.......

I suspect that's why the Chapel Choir is so popular among all students who could read music - so that the two main sexes (there are now more than two, of course) could mingle, and even sing in harmony (we were usually harmonious, even in the intricate counterpoint of Jesu, meine Freude - as long as those pesky tenors didn't go flat).

Another good reason why comprehensive students would never fit in was that anything challenging could - and would - be turned into epic near-death experiences: when it was snowing heavily one weekend, the duty master thought it would be a good idea to bus willing victims to the mountains and attempt to summit the highest one through the blizzard and white-out conditions. Never mind hypothermia and frostbite - it was good for moral fibre, especially as none of us boys (only the boys volunteered to be victims, of course) had proper waterproofs or boots .

People who sees the picture would be inspired to play piano. Even those who are thinking of quitting would see that playing music is a good way to keep the brain healthy & active.

Thanks for sharing...

Yes, when it comes to Use it or lose it, playing the piano is a great way of using your brain!