This week the 2006 Reith Lectures begin on radio 4, and they're a wonderful institution. One of my best moments was giving the lectures back in 1990, because of the sheer luxury of having the space really to develop an idea. Forget soundbites, or even the 2 minutes 45 seconds of Thought for the Day. When it comes to the Reith lectures it's half an hour of unbroken argumentation, purgatory for some, but for those who love learning, sheer heaven.

And what an intriguing choice of lecturer and subject this year: one of the great pianists and conductors of our time, Daniel Barenboim, talking about music and how it's fundamental to our humanity.

It always feels odd talking about music instead of listening to it: a bit like explaining the point of a joke. But there is something spiritual about music, about our ability to rise beyond the sheer pressures of survival and create beauty out of something as insubstantial as mere sound. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke captured that mystical dimension when he said: "Words still go softly out towards the unsayable / and music, always new, from palpitating stones / builds in useless space its godly home."

There's a marvellous moment in the film The Shawshank Redemption when the wrongly imprisoned central character Andy Dufresne commandeers the prison's loudspeaker system and plays a duet from The Marriage of Figaro. And as its notes ring out across the prison yard everyone stops, and in that place of confinement they inhale some blessed breaths of freedom.

Which is why the great religions have always cherished music and made it part of worship, because as the spirit strives to break out beyond the gravitational pull of our daily concerns, words naturally modulate into song and take wing, lifting us with them.

And that really is universal, which is why music, one of the great expressions of our shared humanity, can sometimes cross the otherwise impassable abyss that so often divides one faith or culture from another. That's what Daniel Barenboim has tried to do in his own life, using music to rebuild the shattered relationship between Jews and Germans after the Holocaust, and more recently as a bridge on which young Israeli and Palestinian musicians can meet. Where words divide, music unites, creating moments of harmony and hope. Because we are all voices in God's choir. And if we can sing together, perhaps we can learn to live together, lifted by a beauty that transcends us all.

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