Of course the word "accompanist" is dated, according to Merriam Webster, it dates from 1768. I'd have to look up that first use, I have to admit I'd never thought of it before just now and my first guess would be that it might have been the British writer on music, Charles Burney who invented the word, based on the conception of music that started in the "gallant" style popular at the time. The time period for that might be right but I'd have to get to an Oxford English Dictionary, the real thing and not that flyspeck edition that I can't see even with those annoying oblong magnifying glasses that suck for reading. I also wondered if it it could have been whoever it was at the time who slammed J. S. Bach in favor of the facile triviality of composers such as Daniel Gottlob Türk (seen mostly today in grade 1 or 2 piano methods) though I'm not sure the chronology of that matches. I don't recall who that idiot of that period was.
The idea that an someone who plays with a singer or other instrumentalist on a piano is there for "emotional support" has some reality but it's not a musical reality, it's a musical liability. As someone who has accompanied people who haven't prepared or who have some emotional problem, yeah, you can end up providing them "emotional support" as you conclude that you'll never again say "yes" when they ask you to play the piano part for them. But that's a psychological issue, not a musical one. When the person you're playing with does well, it's a partnership that puts the music to the front. As that, it is probably nothing like Simps has ever experienced, either as a guitar strummer or as a listener. I doubt he listens to music like that, he's got a one-line attention span that lasts about three minutes, top. I know his view of piano music is that stupid, a true successor of the idiot 18th century critic whose name I don't recall above. Why should music be any different, in that regard?
Now, I've got to do something productive so I'll go scrub out my oven.
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