I've just returned from seeing the Titian exhibition at the National Gallery with a couple of friends. I don't think that any art exhibition has ever moved me quite as much as this one did. I wasn't that keen on going, because the little bit I'd seen of Titian in reproduction didn't excite me all that much. But a friend, the lutemaker Michael Lowe, pointed out to me that he's the most important northern Italian painter of the sixteenth century, that his very long life spans the period of Italian music that I spend most of my time immersed in, and that engaging with his art is another way into the culture that produced the music that I know and love and aspire to bring to life. My approach to the music has always been to approach and understand it as far as possible on its own terms, rather than arrogantly appropriating it or arranging it according to my taste. (Of course a certain amount of this is unavoidable, but I want to understand this music for what it is, and to get an inkling of the impact it might have had at the time of its creation.) Anyway, the sensitivity, the refinement and sophistication, but also the depth and humanity of those paintings confirms everything I feel about the music. You can forget the idea that society and culture five hundred years ago were somehow less developed than in the nineteenth or twentieth, or, indeed, the twenty-first centuries. This music and this art represent, for my money, a high point. I don't wish to appear to be luddite or too retro, but, as far as I'm concerned, this high point hasn't since been equalled.

So make it your mission

To get to the Titian!

Anything less

Is a glaring omission!

Unfortunately it closes in ten days' time....