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. This means Scotland is the only nation in the world with two such Unesco designations, Edinburgh being a city of literature from 2004.

The Unesco designation is not a prize, but an opportunity. The biggest benefit is the challenge to make the most of the title in the years to come. The committee has to report to Unesco every two years on its activities and progress. Glasgow’s claim to musical vibrancy now begins in earnest, with its status providing a launch pad for developments.

Koichiro Matsuura, the director general of Unesco who was in Glasgow to announce the successful bid, emphasised that culture is not merely an economic phenomenon, but “provides meaning and a sense of identity and continuity that is integral to the life of all societies”.

This is exactly the kind of encouragement that Scotland needs, when an understanding of the role of culture can be placed centrally in our national development strategies. The success of Glasgow’s bid will impact on the city’s musical ambitions and in all attempts to nurture musical excellence.

The objectives of those behind Glasgow’s bid have been clear: to promote excellence in all sorts of music; to stimulate further interest in musical education; to re-conceive Glasgow culturally as a world music centre; and to improve access to music for all ages and social and ethnic backgrounds. Unesco have decided that the infrastructures are in place for this expansion to proceed.

It was probably the international reputations of the Royal Scottish Academy of Music, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, Scottish Opera and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra which had a huge persuasive effect on the final decision. This is Glasgow’s big chance to put music at the core of things. It will be beneficial in many ways. Recent research in Switzerland and the US indicates that higher overall academic achievement is attained by a child who has an active involvement in the study of music.

When a child is given the opportunity not just to play an instrument or sing, perform in bands, orchestras and choirs, but to learn how to listen actively to a piece of music, engaging with it with a curious, open mind rather than relegating it to the background while other activities are undertaken, then the mind is uniquely stimulated.

When that stimulation leads to an ability to appraise what is being heard, the mental powers of engagement are stretched and improved. The study of music is unique in offering a child the chance to analyse and express a verbal reaction to an abstract construct. If there is an understanding of these researches by those who educate Glasgow’s young people then a surge towards the city’s musical fulfilment can begin, and could be unstoppable.

In his book, Music and the Mind, the psychiatrist Anthony Storr suggests our feelings and emotions are given structure, fluency and order when exposed to the abstract nature of music.

Music, as the deep mathematics of creation and cosmos, connects our constantly over-stimulated lives in the modern world with an archetypal sense of order in nature. Music, when it speaks directly and profoundly to the human psyche, can provide a transformative sense to human life in all its corporeal, intellectual and spiritual parameters.

Deep in our culture, from Pythagoras to TS Eliot, have been thinkers who know that a life without an active listening and awareness of serious music is a life diminished. The lives of countless individuals left damaged by this lack leads to a damaged society. We see this all around us every day.

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.

The complex, large-scale forms of serious music unfold their narratives in time with an authority that cannot be hurried. Whether we are performers, composers or listeners, we are required to give something up for a life of music.

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.

Dr James MacMillan is one of Scotland’s foremost classical composers and conductors

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