There's actually a recurring pattern for anyone who cares to notice. Most new instruments are developed to emulate something else and they do it badly. Pipe organs were developed to emulate choirs. Now we love pipe organs precisely because of their limitations. They have a "distinctive sound."
The same thing happened with the Fender Rhodes piano, the Mellotron, the Moog, the Fairlight Synthesizer, and (believe it or not) MIDI. They started as cheap substitutes (masked by a "wow" factor), then people bemoaned their limitations relative to what they emulated and ditched them, then they were resurrected for the uniqueness of their sound.
Instruments are defined by their limitations. No matter how much we claim to hate those limitations, we end up loving them for them.
Up to a point. Most of your argument I love, but The pipe organ was developed to make sounds, music of its own and particularly to accompany choirs, not emulate them. It wasn't really until the Victorian era that the orchestral organ was a thing, with stops deliberately created to emulate and even replace orchestra sounds (some fairly realistically, especially with the clarinet and flute families for obvious reasons). Pipe organs are excellent at both analogue simulation and their own sounds and performance! And, no two of them are the same, most remarkably.
There's actually a recurring pattern for anyone who cares to notice. Most new instruments are developed to emulate something else and they do it badly. Pipe organs were developed to emulate choirs. Now we love pipe organs precisely because of their limitations. They have a "distinctive sound."
The same thing happened with the Fender Rhodes piano, the Mellotron, the Moog, the Fairlight Synthesizer, and (believe it or not) MIDI. They started as cheap substitutes (masked by a "wow" factor), then people bemoaned their limitations relative to what they emulated and ditched them, then they were resurrected for the uniqueness of their sound.
Instruments are defined by their limitations. No matter how much we claim to hate those limitations, we end up loving them for them.