pianist vs. piano player

[Donald M Lance]

on 2/6/02 10:54 PM, Laurence Horn at laurence.horn at YALE.EDU wrote:

> At 5:32 PM +0000 2/7/02, Herbert Stahlke wrote:
>> In all those Westerns where the piano in a saloon gets
>> shot up, it's always a piano player, even though it's
>> nearly always solo.  Wasn't Sam in Casablanca also a
>> piano player, not a pianist?  Or doesn't that function
>> get mentioned in the film?  But I think venue is a
>> factor.  In a bar or a night club it's more likely to be
>> a piano player.
>>
>> Herb Stahlke
>
> 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".
>
> larry
>
Also fiddler vs fiddle player.

DMLance