Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner "Pianist" vs. "piano player"

In my books, if you play the piano, you're a pianist! You can qualify it if you like, for clarity (amateur pianist, serious amateur pianist, beginner pianist, totally incompetent pianist, jazz pianist, hobby pianist, ensemble pianist) but the simple definition of a pianist is someone who plays the piano. Otherwise, when will you know that you're a pianist?

And by the way, I'm a violist!

When you can play all the Chopin etudes blindfolded?

I agree with you. And my daughter, who has only been playing the clarinet for three months, already thinks of herself as a clarinetist.

Violas rock! (Don't listen to all those jokes that violinists like to make... )

Ha!

If one who teaches is called a teacher

Why not one who plays the piano be called a pianoer?


(hmmmm, did I just say that?)

"Pianoer"-- that's a good one. Thanks everybody for the feedback, it's been helpful. So I guess it's about skill level then. Maybe y'all could listen to some of the pieces I've posted in the Piano Bar section of the adult beginner's forum and tell me if I'm a pianist or not! Just kidding (sort of).

So, it seems like opinions are divided, as usual. I'd rather err on the side of humility. I'd rather use a humbler term and have people be pleasantly surprised, than use a presumptuous word and have people be disappointed.

Then there's the question of whether I'm a "composer" just because I write music. But I'll save that question for another time.

Thanks again for all the feed back.

Larry Larson, pianoista

Some people distinguish these terms,
with "pianist" being the more
complimentary word, and "piano
player" having an almost derogatory
connotation. For example, "He's
a concert pianist.", "He's
the piano player in the bar down
the street.", etc.

I personally do not distinguish
the words. I regard them as
completely synonymous and
interchangeable in any context.

If you are building a website for your music, you are obviously serious about it, so calling yourself a pianist would not be out of order, IMHO.

Your visitor stats, will soon tell you if you made the right decision.

More important, will be the title, description, and keywords you use on your pages, as well as quality content, that will please the search engines.

I doubt many people type the words, 'piano player' into Google :-)

I think this is the issue to focus upon for purposes of your website. Google both terms and see where you'd like your website to fall.

To me, "pianist" usually refers to one who plays in the classical music tradition at a fairly high level, sometimes a virtuosic level. To take that further, and say that everyone who plays at a fairly high level, regardless of style, suggests that there is an equivalency in both style and proficiency. Knowing I could be stepping into a cow pie here, I question how many of us really believe that?

But going on, "Piano player" is an awkward and seldom used, except for those who are making a point of it--point being, they are not playing in the classical tradition, and to take it even further, they are playing in a style or tradition that is opposed to the classical tradition, sometimes in a manner or style that is considered deliberately inartistic.

As new non-classical musical traditions deepened and became established, terminology may have changed. Early dixieland "piano players" may very well have referred to themselves as just that, "piano players," (it sounds right to my ear). But as the style developed, and other styles developed from it that were further and further from dixieland, "piano player" may have gone into disuse. Fats Domino, to my mind, is a "piano player," but by the time we're as far removed from Dixieland as Dave Brubeck, we seem to use the term "jazz pianist."

The danger of this discussion is that we're dealing with terms that connote both race and class.

Tomasino

When a piano player plays a piano, the audience should appropriately be called piano listeners.

I always assumed that lack of historical evidence of notices reading, "Please don't shoot the pianist" explains why to this day they don't play anything one might have ever heard in a saloon.

Howard