I read recently that the ancient Greeks used sometimes to sleep in temples in the hope that the powerful atmosphere would help them to ‘incubate dreams’. Such dreams would provide imagery and symbols to help them interpret whatever it was that was puzzling them. I sometimes feel that my life as a classical musician has been a similar kind of ‘sleeping in temples’, the temples in my case being the works of great music which have occupied me and my fellow musicians. When I say ‘sleeping’, it is not meant to sound like a retreat from the world, rather a desire to recharge my batteries by connecting with powers bigger than myself.

When I look around my musician friends, however, I realise that none of us is religious, or not in the formal sense. Perhaps the analogy of ‘temples’ is therefore a strange one to use. But I think that for many musicians, the great works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert and so on are as close as we come to sacred texts, and their individual notes can feel like words of truth. The attempt to come to terms with them, to transmit them, has something of the feeling of a sacred task. This may sound a little solemn in an age of loud disposable music.