pianist vs. piano player

[Peter A. McGraw]

Could it be summed up as:

pianist:piano player::violinist:fiddler::highbrow:lowbrow, leaving it open
whether it's the type of music or the venue that's high- or lowbrow?

Admittedly "jazz violinist" muddies the water just a little.  (I didn't
know there was such a thing as a jazz violinist, but *jazz fiddler seems
definitely wrong.)

Peter

--On Thursday, February 7, 2002 12:54 PM +0800 Laurence Horn
<laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:

> Exactly; that's a more direct way of getting at what I was getting
> at:  With "fiddler" vs. "violinist" it's genre of music, but with
> "pianist" vs. "piano player" it may be venue (Casablanca/Shoot the
> Piano Player) or (if the venue is more formal) kind of music or
> nature of activity (solo vs. ensemble).  Maybe we have this prototype
> (in Rosch's sense) of pianist as, say, Horowitz or Rubenstein or
> Cliburn playing Chopin in a concert hall, and the farther we depart
> from that (in either type of setting, type of music, or role of the
> piano with respect to other members of the ensemble), the more likely
> we are to substitute "piano player".



****************************************************************************
                               Peter A. McGraw
                   Linfield College   *   McMinnville, OR
                            pmcgraw at linfield.edu