John Lubbock, artistic director at the Orchestra of St John’s, says words do not help people to appreciate good music

Since my last piece about the joys of performing to autistic children and others with learning difficulties, my thoughts have been turning to how so-called able-bodied people approach their own ‘receiving’ of music. These thoughts have been stimulated by getting round to reading Malcolm Gladwell’s fascinating book, Blink — The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. The main message of the book is to show how decisions can be made successfully, and responses can be totally valid, with little time for analysis. Many experiments over the years show this.

In one of the most graphic, two groups of students were asked to assess the quality of a teacher. One group made their assessment after attending a term of lectures. The second group was shown a 20-second film of a lecture without the sound. The assessments of the two groups were 95 per cent identical. This was held to demonstrate the power of the instinctive ability of humans to get to the point of something without deep analysis.

What has all this to do with listening to music? You can of course write about music in factual ways — the form of a piece, the key, whether one tune is the inversion of another, how it is orchestrated, and how it relates to previous works. What to my mind is not useful — and is detrimental to one’s own response to a piece of music — is much of what is written about music. So much is inhibiting to the music lover.

Years ago, a member of the Orchestra of St John’s took part in the famous set of televised master classes by the great French cellist Paul Tortelier. I remember well the moment when he stopped this girl playing, and said in his inimitable French accent “and here iz zee sun”. This was the first moment when I realised that however charming that remark, it could only distract people from hearing their own response to that phrase. You listen to the piece again, and when you come to that phrase you are thinking of Tortelier’s response about the sun, and miss your own.

In the art world this has been discussed in the recent Reith lectures of Grayson Perry, and in an article in the Sunday Times by Christina Patterson, in which many artists show contempt for much that is written about art.

Professor Pater of Harvard University, who was the mentor of the English art scholar Bernard Berenson, said that “all art aspires to the condition of music”, a phrase I cherish as it so confirms my belief that music requires no words for illumination. As in so many other areas of life, words and explanations help to bolster the reputation of experts and keep the ignorant in their place. Ignorance is no barrier to the pleasure of music. In order to listen and receive music the only qualification you need is to be able to breath.

Forthcoming concerts include: l OSJ Proms at the Ashmolean — Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, Tuesday, January 21 and Wednesday, February 19.

To book tickets, visit www.osj.org.uk