In a tick, you are taken from ancient Troy to a contemporary concert hall, and the magical, electrifying instant when a great conductor poises before bringing down his baton to release an opening note.  Now you know what Troy felt like.

The drawing, I realise, looks more like Mahler in full swing, but it captures the energy of a great conductor’s stick coming down and launching something that makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters and Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘Then in that handsome room, in Troy, it was

Just as it is for us when Solti’s stick comes down

And a wall of singers hits their opening note

And the hair on the back of your neck stands up.’

Source: Christopher Logue, War Music: An account of Books 1-4 and 16-19 of Homer’s Iliad, London: Faber and Faber, 2001, p. 126