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Glasgow will sing with renewed vitality thanks to city of music status

On August 20 it was announced that Glasgow is to join Unesco’s worldwide creative cities network as a city of music, alongside Seville and Bologna, writes James MacMillan. This means Scotland is the only nation in the world with two such Unesco designations, Edinburgh being a city of literature from 2004.

The responsibility on Glasgow to respond imaginatively over the next few years is huge. In our “post-religious” secular society, even the most agnostic and sceptically inclined music-lovers will lapse into spiritual terminology to account for the impact of music on their lives.

One hears of lives being transformed by music, of moods and perspectives being altered, of attitudes shifting and renewed meaning taking root in lives touched by this complex and discursive form.

The serious, open and active form of listening (necessary for classical music, for example) is analogous to contemplation, meditation and even prayer in the way that it demands our time.

A serious approach to music presents a counter- cultural challenge to the dead-handed confirmation of things as they are. The boundless vision of composers through the ages points to the realisation of ourselves as something greater than we are.

This is why lovers of music refer to it as the most spiritual of the arts. This is why Glasgow’s renewed love affair with music could be the making of us. Glasgow, city of music? Glasgow, city of renewal and revelation, more like.

Full story at the Sunday Times.