Published: 15 December, 2011
by JOHN GULLIVER

IT would have been daunting for any speaker.

Imagine how much you are expected to know when you stand in front of an audience of leading neurologists – many of them big names in neuroscience in the UK.

But within minutes of striding up to the lectern at the Royal Society of Medicine in Marylebone to deliver a talk on the interaction between music and the brain, buoyant Sir Jonathan Miller – one of the nation’s big brains – had the audience in his hands.

Howls of laughter ran among the 350-strong audience through his talk.

His was, I suppose, a theatrical performance, none more so than when he made a great confession at the start.

Trained in medicine, as well as becoming one of our great opera producers, Miller (pictured) let the cat out of the bag.

He didn’t know how to read music.

This would surprise many opera-goers who admire his revolutionary productions of 19th-century classics.

He had had many “misgivings” when invited to give the talk because he was “profoundly unqualified” to do so. “I never did, I never could read music,” he said to ripples of laughter. “I am musically dyslexic.”

He recalled that when he was first approached at his Camden Town home to direct an opera, he pointed out that he knew little about opera, and had only seen one opera at the age of 10.

Then he admitted that he couldn’t read music, but, after having been assured that that didn’t matter, he started out on his productions that have captivated the opera world.

Then he realised the similarities between talking – which has its “prosodies” and “tones” – and music as well the importance of hand movements in communication described by a German scientist as “kinetic melody”.

Blending all this with a study of opera gave him the key to his productions, he said.

Operas, like paintings, have to be seen according to the times in which they were made.

Many religious paintings at the National Art Gallery were painted to be kneeled in front of.

“Now they are raised on walls and seen quite differently,” he said.

While his operas use modern gestures, singers of “backdated” 19th-century productions often use “ghastly movements as if someone is drowning”.

Next month, he announced, he is off to Valencia for a production of his Rigoletto.

The speakers were introduced by Dr Gordon Plant, consultant at the National Hospital for Neurology in Holborn and Moorfields Eye Hospital, Islington.

Dr Plant also gave a talk on the “Neurology of the clarinet”.