What kind of skill did the average amateur pianist have in the classical era?
We hear of composers as the greats of the keyboard, but I imagine there were also a lot of people who had the time and money to learn to play in their own homes. Probably not a huge number, but I suspect there were some, right? That being the case, I can also imagine that, in order to undertake such a hobby at the time you must have wanted to put in a lot of effort. Would the average amateur of the classical era be considered an accomplished pianist of today, or were there a lot of mediocre players playing the contemporary equivalent of fur Elise over and over?Let's define classical as ending with Beethoven, and starting after J S Bach, just to constrain things.
Probably mediocre like now. One of the things that you find happening in the Romantic era is the development of all kinds of music training exercises and schools because the music had become music more demanding technically. It was during the Romantic era that the first music teaching methods were developed as well.
