I would like to relate a story and then offer a vision of the future.

A music school recently bought my music composition software to
make arrangements of traditional music for their performance group -
avoiding paying for arrangements.  They invited me to go there and give
a presentation and speak to the students.  When I arrived they performed
for me.  I was blown away - it changed my life.  There on stage were young
students, ages 10 to 16, setting at perhaps 20 midi keyboards (sometimes
2 per keyboard).  When they began to play Beethoven's 5th, the entire
auditorium filled with sound.  It was incredible what these young people
were doing!  My eyes could not believe what my ears were hearing.  I was
aghast.  It was a heart warming experience.  It was a wonderful rendering
of the symphony and you could see in their young eyes and the smiles on
their young faces that they knew that they were a part of something
wonderful.

On driving back home I began to think of the possibilities of this - 20 or
so young people playing Beethoven in such away that if you were to just
hear the music, you would think that it was the New York Philharmonic.

Each student was assigned a part, contra bass, cello, etc.  and they
played that line, reading the music.(midi allows 1 cello to sound like many
cellos, etc.).  All of the keyboards were connected to a recording studio
mixer and then to rock concert style speakers

Now, since the keyboard is well established in human civilization, and any
voice can be gotten from a midi keyboard, then all non-vocal music ever
written can be played by an orchestra of keyboardists.  This solves the
problem of finding players of double bassoons, or enough French horn
players for a given performance, etc.

I know its sad to think of those swaying violinists going away, replaced
by a violin section playing keyboards, but it might happen.  This approach
solves another problem since the keyboardists are interchangeable.  You
could be a cello player on one piece and a trumpet player on another piece.
Sad I know, but I saw it in action and with young people doing it.  I can't
help but think that this approach will catch on at least in schools and
then later when the students become adults, say a generation or so.  But
if it lets young people play classical music, so what?

I am reminded of the story of the reporter interviewing a man on his 100th
birthday.  REPORTER - "I suppose that you have seen a great many changes
in your life" OLD MAN - " Yeah, and I was against everyone of them"

Bill Pirkle