Star Trek: 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Sarek
5. Pieces Of His Backstory Never Made It To Air
Despite living from 2165-2368, a total of 203 years, very little is established in Star Trek of Sarek's life outside of his relationship with Spock, Michael Burnham and his role on Vulcan as an Ambassador.
For this kind of information, we have to look at deleted scenes and dialogue to determine, however apocryphal, pieces of Sarek's backstory. Early in his life, prior to his time in a diplomatic role, Sarek served as an astrophysicist, as revealed in dialogue from the original draft of Journey To Babel. Outside of work, a deleted scene from Elaan of Troyius also references him being an accomplished musician, with enough talent to place first in an all-Vulcan music competition, narrowly beating out his closest competitor; his son Spock.
We have no way of knowing where in the timeline this particular competition takes place, or what instruments were played, but judging by Spock's proficiency it's likely that a Vulcan lute or similar would be the instrument of choice. We can assume neither of them played The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins, a classic Leonard Nimoy track, but we can't say for definite.