Talk:Piano six hands

Neologism
There is evidence of recent occasional use of the term "piano triet" in informal contexts, but not of established serious use. --Deskford (talk) 22:06, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
 * A Google search for "piano triet" only found one relevant use, and that was in quotes drawing attention to the non-standard term, so I am proposing that this article be deleted. --Deskford (talk) 11:07, 28 September 2009 (UTC)
 * "piano six hands" seems to be the accepted term. Having moved it, this seems to be a valid stub and I have unprodded it. If you ask me to delete piano triet as a dirty po, I will do so. &mdash; RHaworth 17:09, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete requested. Thanks for tidying this up. --Deskford (talk) 19:46, 29 September 2009 (UTC)
 * I've removed "triet", as there seems to be no justification for its use. AndrewWTaylor (talk) 14:40, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Hyphen?
See talk:piano four-hands. &mdash; RHaworth 17:18, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

Use of "Trio"
Someone (an IP address) added an assertion that "trio is never used to refer to 'piano six hands'". I removed it, because it is not true: at least when I was having piano lessons, and playing with two other pupils, it was a trio. This score http://imaginatorium.org/private/paderewski.jpg shows a list of arrangements as: Piano, Piano (easy), Piano duet, Piano trio (6 hands), Two pianos (4 hands), etc. I think that all of the (scrappy) collection of piano ensemble articles should be combined in one decent article, and there is then room for a section on terminology. It seems that in French, Russian (etc?) the widely used term is the analog of "n hands" or "m pianos n hands"; my editions of French duets say "a 4 mains" rather than anything like 'duet'. But in (English) English "duet" is all but universal, and "trio" is the next one up; perhaps there is a US/Br difference here. Imaginatorium (talk) 13:30, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

That was me. piano trio simply is not a widely accepted term for three people at one piano - see Oxford Companion to Music or Oxford Dictionary of Music - I'm reading from it now - I quote: "Group of 3 players - pianist, violinist, cellist - or work written for them to perform". Just see piano trio, Piano trio repertoire or http://imslp.org/wiki/List_of_Compositions_for_Piano_Trio for evidence of what piano trio means. "Piano Trio" is widely accepted as meaning something else, namely piano, violin and cello. To list "piano trio" as an alternative name for piano six hands is misleading. "Piano Triet", on the other hand, only has one possible meaning, which is why it is a much better term. Test it - ask any musician what a "piano triet" is, or indeed what a "piano trio" is. You'll get precisely those two distinct definitions every time. (talk) 14:10, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know where you are, but I repeat that (at least in the UK) "piano trio" has always been an accepted term for 1P6H (I'll use this notation, because it's obvious, and unambiguous). And I posted a link to a copy of a score with "Piano trio" listed as the arrangement for 1P6H. So listing a term that has been used widely is hardly misleading. *Of course* I know that the term "piano trio" canonically refers to Piano-Violin-Cello trios, but it can also refer to a piano with two other instruments, or - at a stretch - more or less anything including three people and one or more pianos. I'm not trying to advocate anything, just observing that the term exists. The term "triet", on the other hand, was according to the source the "invention" of one man (Pitts); the discussion above on the original removal of a "Piano triet" article suggests (since surely the people involved are musicians of one sort or another) that it is certainly not an accepted term. Maybe it will be one day --I wonder why it pops up in things in Hungary; could it happen to be the Hungarian form of the Latin for a triple? There are a number of terminological fuzzy bits, as witness the tangled mess on the piano duo disambiguation page (i.e. 'duo' vs 'duet'); for another example "Piano quartet" canonically means Piano-Violin-Viola-Cello, but can also refer to 2P8H. I plan to make a new article to subsume all of these bits, called perhaps "Piano ensemble"... part of which would be a discussion of the terminology issues. I would welcome feedback on this idea. Imaginatorium (talk) 14:46, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Point taken, and your piano ensemble terminology page sounds like a very good plan. The term "piano trio" in the context of the piano six hands page certainly needs an explanation (or disambiguation at least), and I would advocate "piano triet" as a much clearer and more precise term as it can mean only one thing (or two things, if you include five hands at one piano!) - a term which various people have instinctively arrived at independently because it is logically clear and unambiguous and because "piano trio" is not very satisfactory in this context for the opposite reason. The fact that it is gaining wider acceptance and use is, I think, evidence of that. (talk) 15:58, 21 November 2013 (UTC)