Music was a huge part of my childhood. As Strict Baptists, we didn’t engage much in the contemporary world, but my parents invested in a CD player early on because of their love of classical music. My dad was thrilled that, when he played a CD, he could hear the string of a violin being pressed against the fingerboard, the sound of a page being turned …

My dad is slightly deaf so he would always play music at a vast volume, on these beautiful wooden speakers that were about a metre high. I still remember coming down the stairs and hearing Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No 2. I was so poleaxed I had to sit down on the landing – I couldn’t move.

‘Playing the piano is self-effacing, and I’m playing someone else’s music – no one cares if I faff it up’

Classical music was the only music I grew up with, although some of the hymns we’d sing in chapel were old folk tunes; if I go to a classical or folk concert I feel like I’m with my own kind, whereas at pop concerts I feel like a tourist. I did Grade 7 viola and Grade 8 piano; I played the piano with the school orchestra in an arrangement of ‘Vltava’ from Smetana’s Má vlast. I remember swooning over this piece, picturing Prague as this bohemian place where people would discuss poetry over cigarettes at breakfast. I also loved Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words, the Beethoven piano sonatas, the Chopin Nocturnes … all that lush stuff. I had a conversation with my piano teacher and she said, ‘Sarah, when you’re older you’ll want to play Bach – it will restore order to your life’.

And she was right. If you sit down and play a Bach two-part invention, you know it will resolve correctly. As you get older, life gets complicated, difficult, there’s sadness … and as that happens I find myself moving backwards in the canon: Bach, yes, and also early operas by Handel (especially Xerxes) and Purcell (I love the recordings of ‘Dido’s Lament’ by Emma Kirkby and Christine Schäfer). And I still play the piano.

My piano is in my study, which is really important because it allows me to pause from my writing, play, and then carry on – it’s all part of the same practice. If I’m struggling to write, it can feel like walking around a walled garden, trying to find my way in. So I’ll stop and play something I know by heart like the Bach Prelude in C. The act of using your hands in a repetitive and meditative way while engaging your emotions somehow creates this imaginative space – afterwards, I’m often able to do another hour’s work. It’s also important for me to do something that, unlike writing, I’m not supposed to be good at. Playing the piano is self-effacing, and I’m playing someone else’s music – no one cares if I faff it up.

But there was a period of time a couple of years ago when I couldn’t play at all. The thing about Graves’ disease is that, like any autoimmune disease, it weakens you – so when I ruptured my disc, I did it catastrophically. I was lying down a great deal, in a lot of pain, and couldn’t work. But I was still mentally ‘composting’ music I’d heard earlier that year, that eventually contributed to a pivotal scene in my novel Melmoth.

Back in January 2016, I found myself in Prague as a writer-in-residence and, lo and behold, my flat was on the banks of the Vltava. It was also next to the opera house and I became besotted. I saw Dvořák’s Rusalka twice, in two very different productions, and fell in love with the Song to the Moon. When I was able to work again, this is what happened: the experience of seeing Rusalka became inflated, strange and vivid, which enabled me to write about it in an otherworldly, gothic way. That’s why the book is like it is: it’s the result of travel and academic research filtered through a lens of Tramadol.

I’ve recently given myself a new project involving listening to the old classical warhorses. I’m re-engaging with stuff like The Four Seasons and Beethoven’s Symphony No 7, and it’s like meeting old friends. The Mozart Clarinet Concerto has been a surprising rediscovery – the extraordinary purity of the clarinet reminds me of the sound of the human voice. I have to confess that, because of my recent upheavals professionally and personally, I’ve been returning to what I know rather than seeking out new things to listen to. For me, classical music represents a stability and constancy that is always there.

This article originally appeared in the October 2018 issue of Gramophone. Never miss an issue – subscribe today