Can anyone tell me why I received so many thumbs down?

Jack,

I would encourage you not to worry about the trolls, you know more about music than anyone who gave you a thumbs down. As my father likes to say "don't let the idiots keep you up at night"

http://xkcd.com/386/

While I, dear sir, do appreciate withering sarcasm, and find black humor to be a genre I enjoy over other formats of humor, the youngsters do not..... have a developed sense of (subtler) humor in general. [ please note the seasoned adult population of contributors has seriously diminished within the last year. ]

I have yet to learn of any composer who composed any of the monumentally pyro-technical challenging piano works who was not also a more than formidable keyboard player. Schubert is a prime example - a more than adequate pianist but never the virtuoso, he wrote some pieces which are quite difficult while none of them are in that lexicon of pieces of staggering technical requirements. (Franzl never wrote a concerto for anything....)

Your answer required a leap of thought in the reader which was not present in the text itself.

The plainer and more straightforward (and boring for some of these most basic and semi-silly questions) the better received the answer is.

However, it is Y/A, meaning too often enough that plain and straightforward answer may not be what people want to hear (There is not a shortcut, it takes years of study and practice, for example) will harvest just as many or more TD's than your humble response did.

"Keep on trucking."

Best regards.

The fact that Bach, Handel and Scarlatti wrote for the harpsichord (rather than the piano which had not yet been developed) really has no bearing on the question as asked, which refers to today's musicians. Had those guys been around today, they would have been able to play the piano. People in this forum don't usually apprecate facetious answers.

It was probably someone who was a big fan of Bach and thought it rude of what you said. Personally i have no clue what the heck was going on(not a big fan of pianists or whatever the question was about O.o) but personally i think you did nothing wrong whatsoever. I had this happen to me once, i was P'd off >:D ... but i got my revenge...

It's because although technically they did not play the piano that is only because it hadn't been invented yet in its present form. They played the organ, the harpsichord, and so on.

Ignorant bastards think that anything with a keyboard is a piano.

... They missed that section while studying Hendrix during music appreciation class.

Trolls are lurking

It could be that hat of your's? Hell, I'd give ya thumbs down for that hat.

Maybe~ they DID play the piano. ._.

*Thumps Down* . LOL Jk.

They be hating or you got the info wrong? ;c