s a phenomenon, it stands unique in the performing arts. The old pilgrim from another age comes from Spain to trod from town to town as he has for 73 years. Unnoticed, except perhaps for his big black Andalusian hat, quaint ribbon tie, and a sturdy instrument case that never leaves his sight, he checks into a hotel, then goes to the local concert hall.

In Chicago --to which he has been traveling for 52 years-- that would be Orchestra Hall, normally noted for the spectacular massed sounds of the Chicago Symphony. It seems an odd choice for the old man who comes alone.

But soon, thousands noisily file in and swell the place to its rafters. They even overflow onto the stage, where they jam together, surrounding his chair.

A hush, and Andres Segovia solemnly enters carrying his guitar. Tall and portly, he peers out at the packed house through thick spectacles, bows to the applause, takes his seat, and gazes impassively at latecomers who scurry to theirs. Then he props his left foot upon a bootblack's stool, bends in concentration over his six-stringed rosewood box, and starts to play.

The un-amplified sounds are very soft, and Segovia's movements barely perceptible. The audience must furiously concentrate to hear, to enter his almost private world. Once in the midst of a Chicago recital, a stagehand, obviously thinking the hail empty, stumbled across the stage dragging a noisy ladder. Segovia, astonished, looked up. But kept on playing.

Listeners, thus, quickly find themselves sharing a peculiar intimacy, one so intense they would rather strangle than shatter it by sneezing. Amid such unreal stillness, Segovia's soft sounds float to the uppermost reaches of the hall, and, he hopes, to the listener's innermost ones, too.

"If they really concentrate, they will hear that the classical guitar is a complete orchestra," Segovia long has insisted, "though as viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. The sound comes to us from a miniature and more delicate planet than ours. The proportions are the same; the textures clear, the emotions drawn to a natural scale. Everything is smaller, that is all. "

For 73 years the great Spaniard has been spreading the word. As this century's most celebrated prophet of the cooly complex classical guitar, he has elevated its status to highbrow art for European and American audiences. His large, fanatical following has transformed his recitals into love feasts with almost religious overtones.

The master's technique remains remarkably untarnished by time; but if his memory suddenly fails, he merely starts over, and everyone understands. Should he drop some notes, or slow to make rough plates plain, no one minds.

"The fire may be gone now," an admirer explains, "but there's nothing wrong with banked embers. To us, the chords are echoing back through glorious years. "

Each effort is greeted by explosions of approval, until finally, after many encores, the maestro gives his customary benediction: "I'm sorry, but my guitar is tired. Wait until next year. " And because the man born Andres Segovia Torres has just passed his 87th birthday, the hope hangs there unsaid.

It's hard to find many dramatic concessions to age, though. Segovia may walk more slowly now, but there's nothing dim about his mind - "except that every other day I play in a different city, and sometimes I forget the last place," he says in mild dismay.

An unfailingly gracious and generous man from a calmer, more genteel era, he has spawned scores of disciples and imitators, plus admirers beyond number. One would think he has nothing left to prove.

"I have been on the road since I was a boy of 14," he explains, "and still travel five months a year, playing 38 concerts. I continue because it has been my life and would be very awkward to abandon. Nor would it be good to do so, I believe. Playing helps my health, my mind, my heart . . . many things. "

Besides, there might be someone who hasn't yet heard the classical guitar, someone else Segovia can reach: "The guitar deserves all the sacrifices I have made or can make," he has been saying all his life. And so he goes on.

Segovia personally has cajoled and inspired many of the greatest modern composers into adding more than 300 compositions to the guitar repertoire. And he's proud never to have paid a commission, either: "Once a composer has written for the guitar and hears his music played, he becomes a composer for the guitar," he notes, with a wry grin. For most creators, though, Segovia's "golden hands," as the Spanish call them, have been inducement enough.

Like the man, the hands do not appear to be particularly artistic. They're meaty and huge, and years of stretching have made the left one noticeably longer than its partner. But they reflect a coordination of mind and muscle that could have made their owner an ace technician and master mood-spinner on any instrument. His, though, is especially demanding.

"I must practice five hours a day, each day of my life," he says. "Only once did I stop, and that was for 15 days when I fled the revolution in Spain. I cannot describe the pain I had in my hands when I started playing again. Then in 1954, I was operated on for a detached retina, and had to lie on my back for 28 days. I still managed to practice a little each day, though. You know the cliché that art is 90 per cent perspiration and 10 per cent inspiration? Is true. "

To Segovia, music is like an ocean and the instruments are islands. While his island is the guitar, the ocean is what really matters. But amateur guitarists marvel at what those golden hands can do, how surely his fingers dart strategically through the guitar's ample, four-octave range (more than half that of the piano), expressing flowing melodies and full accompaniments with delicacy and grandeur.

The Segovia color and touches are renowned --sensuous tenor lines that somehow linger on and on, despite their plucked beginnings. A steely fingernail that nicks nylon string to ping an eerie harmonic, while a fleshy fingertip draws a murmurous sigh. Lusty chords burst like sunbeams through clouds, arpeggios ripple in crystalline filigree. Even multi-voiced fugues sing through clearly. As Segovia plays, the summoned shades of old Sebastian Bach and Luigi Boccherini appear. Dead courtiers rise and dance before the king. The heartbeat of Spain pulses through pudgy, calloused fingers.

Because no matter what genre it paints Segovia says the guitar never forgets its Spanish personality. Nor its femininity. He refers to it as "she," explaining that its gender in most languages is feminine, although its name stems from the ancient Greek cithara, a type of lute.

"If you pronounce the 'c' like 'k,' you obtain 'kitar' or 'guitar,' " he notes, adding that it is wrong to describe the instrument's shape as a figure-eight, something commonly done. Segovia prefers to compare it to the soft curve of a woman's body.

Not surprisingly, he tells a more poetic version of its origin. In his view, Apollo started things off by chiding Cupid for playing with his bows and arrows. Enraged, Cupid shot Apollo through the heart - "and he instantly felt the fire of devastating love for Daphne, the beautiful nymph who happened to be passing by. But Cupid shot another arrow to the heart of Daphne, to kindle in it an aversion to love. "

Apollo then tried to rape Daphne, chasing her until exhaustion. "But when she finally fell into his arms, she invoked the help of her father, who also was a demigod. He quickly converted her into a tree, the laurel, which in Greek is called Daphne.

"Apollo made the first guitar from that splendid tree, and with its leaves we crown the great poets and artists. The guitar preserves from its feminine origin the curved lines of her body, and also the tendency of becoming very whimsical and unpredictable. "

She had a long and noble history by 1893, when Segovia was born in the little southern Spanish mining town of Lunares. But, he says, through neglect, she had earned a reputation as a bawdy barmaid. In Segovia's native Andalusia, the Moorish, Byzantine, Jewish, and Iberian cultures had melded to produce the fierce and bitter flamenco style.

"The guitar was like a hill that had two sides, flamenco and classical," he says. "They existed side by side but didn't look at each other. As a child, I felt art in my heart and soul, but the guitar was employed only to accompany folk songs and dances. There were teachers in my town who played piano, cello, and violin, and I tried to study with them. But they played so poorly, I was frightened off. On the streets, though, I heard the guitar. Despite the rough edges, I was taken by the suavity of it, the nuance, the sonority. "

Segovia's family was strongly against his studying the guitar seriously. They were sure he would end up playing in a tavern. His father, a lawyer, even smashed three guitars in disgust. "But something told me I was right," Segovia says. "The guitar was a beautiful instrument, and I felt if I persisted in playing beautiful music, it would be recognized as such. There was something in her soul that I loved. "

Segovia is entirely self-taught. There were no classical guitar teachers in his town, few in Spain. He started playing at age 8, taught himself to read music, and spent many predawn hours studying music theory while his family slept. In his free time, he haunted taverns, libraries, music stores- anywhere he might pick up something about classical guitar. He also methodically applied piano exercises to the guitar and found to his joy that his fingers gradually grew strong and supple.

"It is easier now for students to gain proper instruction in the guitar," he says. "But there still are places where this is not possible. That is why I have written a book to give beginners at least the basics. " ("Segovia: My Book of the Guitar," published by Collins.)

Folk music of most cultures is intuitive, learned instinctively, and passed on by ethnicity, not formal education. Folk guitarists need not utilize the full potential of the instrument, which is why the guitar is so easy to play and so murderous to truly master. Classical guitarists, though, must simultaneously perform both solo and accompaniment, as do pianists, while using only four fingers of each hand. And traditions span four centuries.

Without a teacher, Segovia really set himself lofty goals. Especially since each of the last few centuries has seen only a handful of great classical guitarists. In the 19th, it was Francisco Tarrega, and his protégés Miguel Llobet, Emiio Pujol, Daniel Fortea, and Pascual Roch. Tarrega (1854-1909) is credited with largely having founded the modem school of guitar playing. An extremely shy virtuoso and a humble man, he devoted his life to furthering guitar technique and extending the repertory. Much too timid to tour extensively, he limited his playing to intimate groups.

Segovia came north too late to ever know Tarrega, but he shared his mission. As the youngster's playing progressed, he finally was pushed to the stage by guitar enthusiasts in Granada. "I was 16," he recalls. "When I read the generous review of my concert in the small newspaper in that city, I thought I was already famous throughout the world. "

That would take a decade or two. But it almost seemed preordained. A few years after his debut, Segovia went to the Madrid workshop of Manuel Ramirez, one of Spain's top guitar makers and royal lutenist of the Madrid Conservatory. Segovia flatly told the startled Ramirez, "I have imposed on myself the duty of following the example of Saint Francisco Tarrega, who lived and suffered for his beloved instrument without hoping for profit or glory. " Upon hearing the boy play, Ramirez gave him one of his finest instruments.

"Shortly afterward, something very strange happened," Segovia recounts. "After giving my first concert in Madrid, I went home to Andalusia. One day I was practicing with great pleasure when the guitar's bridge suddenly burst. A big bang! I blamed it on the heat, but later I spoke with Ramirez's wife. She told me that at the very moment my guitar had broken, Ramirez had died. I've never told this to the press, because they would think I was making up stories. But is true. "

When Segovia started out, he had to play much borrowed music - transcriptions from other instruments. This earned him scorn from purists, but musicianship triumphed, and by 1919 he had caused sensations in Europe and South America. In 1928, he gave the first guitar recital ever held in New York City, and in the following 11 weeks played 40 concerts to amazed American audiences. The wonder has yet to cease.

But the master still hits the road each year, while his young wife, Amelia, keeps track of things at their homes in Switzerland and Spain. She is the third Mrs. Segovia, the former Amelia Corral Sancho, who had been one of his guitar students. They married in 1962, when she was 22. Segovia simply calls her "the joy of my life. " He also enjoys mentioning his two sons, one of whom is 60, the other, 10. When young Carlos has been confronted by schoolyard bullies, he is not reluctant to use his older brother (a Parisian artist) as a threat.

Looking back over his life, Segovia says he set four great tasks for himself: "The first was to redeem the guitar from the taverns. Then I wished to create a repertoire of serious music by symphonic composers, not guitarists as had been the custom. "And I wanted to travel and show the beauty of the guitar to the public, the critics, and the universities. By that I hoped to accomplish the fourth task, which was to establish a curriculum for teaching of the guitar at the same dignified level as other instruments. There were so many students, and they wanted to study the guitar properly.

"Those were my tasks. Perhaps they have been accomplished, but I still work at them each day. As for now, my health is good. I don't get tired. And I don't want to rest.

"I will have an eternity to rest later. "