One thing I love about having the Edinburgh Festival on my doorstep is of course the music.

From inspiring Chamber Orchestra concerts down to the buskers on the city streets, there’s a bit of something for everyone.

Fittingly, for our Athens of the North, it was the Greeks who treated music as something sacred.

Like maths and geometry, they began to notice how music had natural harmonies in it.

Sure, it was fun too, but its deeper beauty lay not in the satisfaction that Mick Jagger was looking for, but in its truth, beauty and harmony.

Indeed music is telling us something true and good and right, and eternal.

Perhaps this is one way to look at what happens at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Through music, festival founder Sir Rudolph Bing wished to confirm the return of peace to Europe.

He wanted to underline the restoration of harmony among nations.

And music does that brilliantly in several ways.

It does so when it is played and sung beautifully,

For example, tourists from across the world, as well as local dignitaries such as the Lord Provost, crammed into St Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral last weekend for the annual Festival Mass.

At the reception afterwards, people from all walks of life, different political persuasions, Christian and non-Christian were unanimous about one thing: the music from the organist and choir was beautiful.

I think that’s because of its harmony.

Chaos is not where we’re meant to be; we’re meant, as St Paul says to us, to be in harmony; in harmony with each other, at peace with the earth, in harmony with the cosmos.

I hope that the beauty and the harmony of the music on display at the International Festival this year, will continue to illustrate and underline the intentions of Rudolph Bing; the shared desire for peace and harmony in our troubled world; and our firm political resolution to work for peace and harmony, especially Europe, but elsewhere in our world as well.

Have a harmonious and happy Festival!