Philip Hii – guitarist

The first time I started thinking about it was when I was teaching at North Texas State University, now UNT.

I had a student named Anthony P. Anthony was just a freshman, and not even a music major. He had come from Houston and he had the most incredible gift. Everything he played, he made the guitar sing.

And in that singing, I could hear a ‘voice.’ It was a voice full of feeling and expression. At times it was plaintive, at other times coaxing. When he played, you felt like he was speaking directly to you.

After that, I began to hear other musicians the same way. In every one of them, I could hear a voice too. In good musicians, I heard voices with the same sensitivity as Anthony’s, voices full of feeling and expression.

And in others, all I could hear was a “blah blah blah blah blah.”

You feel as if they’re talking at you instead of to you.

Try it. Go on youtube and listen, not to the notes, not to the technique, not even to the music, just listen to the ‘voice’ behind the playing. You may have to close your eyes and concentrate real hard and then you will hear the ‘voice’ in the notes.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hosting three wonderful musicians at Del Mar college. One of them was Yury Martynov, Chair of the keyboard department at the Moscow Conservatory.

Yury Martynov at Del Mar College

Professor Martynov is not exactly a household name, but in the pantheon of great musicians, he’s right up there with the best, Dinu Lipatti and Glenn Gould.

At a private dinner, he played three pieces for us and I was completely floored. Never had I heard such sensitivity and feeling. The word is ‘magical,’ especially in his impromptu performance of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9 No. 1 (this youtube  performance is not by Martynov but it’s pretty good too.)

What is it about Martynov and Anthony that so captivated me?

Sensitivity.

Anthony was blessed with incredible natural sensitivity to the music he was playing. He probably didn’t know what he was doing, but he knew how to make those notes sing.

Mr. Martynov, on the other hand, is the consummate artist. He knows exactly what he’s doing, and he creates pure magic with it, with great sensitivity.

So what’s this thing called sensitivity?

We know what it means in life, we use the word all the time. We say someone’s sensitive to the cold, to heat, to pollen, perhaps even to criticism.

To me, it means to be aware, to sense and know what’s going on, and respond to it, either consciously or unconsciously.

That definition is the same in music, to play with sensitivity means you must know what’s going on in the music and you’re able to respond to it and convey that feeling and emotion to the audience.

At the basic level, it means giving full expression to the melodic line.

Like a good actor speaking his lines convincingly, you must play every note and melody convincingly, and give it its appropriate emotional content and meaning.

But sensitivity is much more than just playing melody expressively.

You must know everything else that’s going on in the music, from chord changes to key changes, to every compositional device in the book.

If you’re going from the dominant chord to the tonic chord, you must convey the sense of resolution in that chord progression. Or if you’re playing an appoggiatura, you must give it that sense of resolution too. Or if you’re modulating to a different key, you must know the relationship between that key to the old key and be able to convey that relationship in your playing. (For instance, modulating from A major to C major requires a different treatment as from A major to E major.)

And you must understand the function and relative weight of every other element in the music.

For instance, main themes have more weight than secondary themes, and secondary themes more weight than transitional filler material. Melody has more weight than bass lines and bass lines more weight than accompaniment. And you have to play them all accordingly. You can’t play everything exactly the same as if they all have the same musical weight and meaning.

If you do, you’ll get that “blah blah blah” effect I wrote about earlier.

It does make playing classical music difficult, doesn’t it?

Well, western classical music is a highly evolved art form and no one claims it’s easy or simple. It’s a complex language in itself, with many special conventions and syntax and one has to immerse oneself thoroughly in the art to be able to understand and express it convincingly.

How does one go about learning all this?

From experience — from listening to other artists, understanding what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and then incorporating those things into your own playing.

But the most important part is to become extra sensitive to everything that’s going on in the music and be able to convey that understanding to the listener in your playing.

In his masterclass, Mr. Martynov said something which sums up his special musicianship perfectly. Talking about a Scriabin phrase, he said, “That phrase is very boxy [square], in your playing, you must escape that box.”

That, to me, is the essence of good sensitive musicianship, make the music come alive, make it sing, make it talk and escape all the boxes within it.

One of my favorite activities during summer is to drive up the Santa Cruz Mountains to visit one of my favorite persons, John Gilbert.

I’ve forgotten how I got to know John. My first recollection of meeting him was having him fine-tune my Savino guitar for my Chopin recording.  I was having trouble with its intonation and John was kind enough to redo the saddle and fix the fretwork for me.

After that, I went up regularly to visit him, every summer, whenever I was in the SF Bay Area. And I got to know him well. Usually, we would just stay in his studio in the garage and talk guitar talk. He was a walking encyclopedia of guitar facts and knowledge and I was the eager student. And in between the small talk, I would play for him. I remember playing most of my Chopin nocturnes for him before I recorded them in 2002.

John was one of the gentlest and kindest persons I’ve ever known. I remember telling him once that I was looking for a new key to my Mark Leaf case (my only key had broken) and he spent a whole afternoon trying to machine-tool one for me, unfortunately without much success. Thankfully, our mutual friend, Andre, happened to be there and offered me one of his spares.

And then there was the time I brought the missus up to see him. When he found out that she’s a schoolteacher, he gave her a whole box of his specialty rocks and stones for her to show her students. These are machine ground stones, made with the same loving care he built all his guitars.

It’s March, the time I usually start looking forward to summer again, and to my annual trip up the Santa Cruz Mountains. But this year, it looks like I wouldn’t be making that trip. Thanks, John, for everything.

When I was young, I used to imagine myself to be a pretty good writer.

I was editor of my high school paper, editor of a student newspaper in NZ, and column editor for the American String Teacher, and I wrote a few articles that were published by Soundboard and the American String Teacher, among others.

However, nothing prepared me for the writing of my magnum opus, the AOV.

I’m not sure whether it was the sheer weight of the task, trying to reduce something as profound as virtuosity into a few simple principles, or whether it was just writer’s block.

But it took me eight years before I was happy with it.

Eight years of scribbling, the evidence of which is still scattered all over my house, in the form of scraps of paper and several hefty boxes of notebooks.

And at the end of it all – 35 pages.

And it seems the journey is still not finished yet. These past few weeks, I’ve been busy revising the chapter on rhythm and I think I’m finally happy with it. The ideas are still the same, what’s new is just the presentation.

I recently discovered the term ‘beta book.’ Well, I guess that’s what I’ve been doing these past nine years, writing a beta book. However, with this new rhythm chapter, I think I’m getting close to that final release version.

You can download the latest version of the AOV here.