In its program notes for the Paul Galbraith performance Sunday night, the Hopkins Center called his style a "groundbreaking development in the history of classical guitar." But before you imagine "groundbreaking developments" as if they were somehow grand revelations or massive revolutions, note these key words: "classical guitar." Classical guitarists are distinguished from the likes of Jimi Hendrix primarily by the manufacture of the guitar itself and the fact that classical guitarists use their fingers only, not guitar picks.
Galbraith actually did bring major changes to the world of classical guitar. He and luthier David Rubio premiered a unique new guitar design at the Edinburgh Guitar Festival in 1989. The guitar had eight strings instead of six and an "endpin" coming out of the bottom. Galbraith plays in an elevated chair that looks something like a shoeshine stand, and plays the guitar exactly like a cello. The two extra strings allow Galbraith to perform a wider variety of classical music than guitarists who are stuck with only six strings.
The theme of Sunday's program and a second performance yesterday was French music, featuring selections from Louis Couperin and J. S. Bach from the 17th century to Lennox Berkeley's Sonatina Op. 51 (1958). Several of the pieces from the program were originally intended for the piano or harpsichord, so Paul Galbraith transcribed everything to the eight-string guitar.
The opening number was quite flat and unimpressive; I watched some sleepy old folks nodding off five minutes into the show. If I hadn't been struggling to breath as a result of the dust in Rollins Chapel, I might have dozed off, too. The pace picked up heading into the intermission, but I was not surprised to see a couple of empty seats after halftime.
The classical nature of the music -- read: old and slow music -- attracted a markedly older and slower audience to Sunday night's concert.
Speaking of the generation gap, Paul Galbraith's concert raises the ever-present question: "to mike or not to mike?" Although I come from the (younger) generation that argues "the louder, the better," I can also appreciate the point of view that enjoys a classical concert in a sunlit chapel with no acoustic amplification. In essence, this supports the same principle as MTV's "Unplugged" -- that electronic synthesis corrodes the authenticity of music.
Interestingly, the Galbraith concert did not end in a full standing ovation. This I attribute not to the inferiority of the concert, but only to the audience's unfamiliarity with standard Hopkins Center procedure. A handful of enthusiastic patrons stood up immediately after the performance, confused in their Hop concert etiquette and thinking that everyone has to play along so it won't look funny when the soloist re-emerges to play his or her programmed encore. I have puzzled over the phenomenon of the Hopkins Center standing ovation for a while now, because it seems like a cheap imitation of what ought to be a sincere gesture of appreciation.
