Clearly, Mozart’s music is beautiful and cathartic. But according to some experts, it can go beyond stirring emotions and actually induce healing in the listener’s brain.

It was a French ENT doctor called Alfred Tomatis who first posited the idea that listening to Mozart could be healing. In his book Pourquoi Mozart (Why Mozart?) he claimed that Mozart’s music had particular vibrational properties that promoted healing and development in the brain.

In my new novel, Concerto, the heroine, Catriona, is a music therapist, and so of course she is well versed in how music can aid healing. When she is hired to help Umberto, a pianist composer who has gone blind and turned his back on his music, she soon discovers that he is a stubborn and argumentative client. When she explains the Mozart Effect to Umberto, he replies:

‘Pourquoi pas Beethoven, or Bach for that matter? I can’t see why Mozart should get all the glory.’

Catriona explains: ‘Well, I think it comes down to those particular qualities of Mozart’s music. The thinking is that neither the tidal wave of emotion you get with Beethoven, nor the tapestry of sound the mathematical genius of Bach gives you quite does the job.’

When Umberto continues to be sceptical, she outlines some of the ways in which the Mozart Effect is being used:

‘There are monks in Brittany who play Mozart to their cows to give more milk. And in Japan, they’re using it to make yeast grow thicker so they get the best sake.’

In fact, there are many more reported cases of the beneficial effects of Mozart’s music, from improving spatial-temporal reasoning and creative problem-solving, to decreasing seizure activity in epileptic patients.

In Concerto, Umberto remains unconvinced about the Mozart Effect – about therapeutic support in general, in fact. Catriona knows, though, that she can help him find his way back to music, back to himself, if only he will open his mind and allow her to help. She tells him:

‘Often the loss of sight is like being grief-stricken after losing the thing or person most dear in the world. There is shock, denial, mourning, depression. In the past I’ve treated patients who go about their everyday lives feeling frozen, like a walking zombie. Then a piece of music will catch them by surprise, melting the ice around their heart, and that opens the door into feeling emotion once more.’

Can Umberto’s frozen heart be melted? Perhaps for him it will not be the Mozart Effect that makes the difference, so much as the Catriona Effect.