MICHELE NORRIS, host:
Mondays, we bring you our series This I Believe. Today we hear from Joan Tower, a composer who began writing music in 1956 at the age of 18. Her works have been played by orchestras around the world, and she teaches at Bard College in New York.
Here's our series curator, independent producer Jay Allison.
JAY ALLISON: Joan Tower has called musical composition a very specific blueprint of your soul, not so very different from what we request from essayists in our series. Tower said she found it more challenging to write and render her feelings in words, but she was game because she wanted to honor her belief in music, what she calls the deepest channel of communication.
Here is Joan Tower with her essay for This I Believe.
JOAN TOWER: After 60 plus years of composing and performing, I believe more than ever in the extraordinary power of music. In this day of fast information and communication, music nourishes our inner souls. As tensions between nations continue, music reaches beyond borders. At weddings, funerals, inaugurations and parades, music gives us public permission to feel and share things. In fact, music has always been a shared thing - between the creator, the performer and the audience. Music connects me to people I don't even know.
Strong music puts you in a space where you forget about yourself. It's like a good movie. It's an escape. You lose yourself. It's a license to feel, sing, shout and to dance.
Do you remember when you first fell in love? Was there a song associated with that love? When you hear that song now, do you think of that person and actually remember what you felt? Maybe you even cry.
When I was growing up, my life largely centered around boys and sex. I was into music, but music didn't always give me the nourishment that boys did. It takes time and patience to be nourished by music. Now I can say without music I would be lost.
A conductor once told me that music had kept him off the streets and even out of jail. Music became a kind of survival phenomena for him and for me, too. It is our drug of choice because it has given us the extraordinary lasting inner experience that has even replaced real drugs, vacations, money, fame and all the things we associate with pleasure and excitement. A friend of mine who happens to be an extraordinary pianist and still practices up to five hours a day once said to me the piano is my best friend. I can't think of anyone better to spend my time with.
I feel the same way about composing. I'm in the studio from 1:00 to 5:30 religiously, every day. I used to run from the studio . I'd tell myself I had to clean, you know, make a telephone call, anything to get out of there. Now I look forward to these hours.
Music is not just my most trusted friend, it makes me come alive, to show strength and passion and to feel useful. Music makes me feel like I'm doing something terribly important. I believe that with music I can help to change the world around me, if just a little bit.
ALLISON: Joan Tower with her essay for This I Believe. We invite you, too, to send us your words about the core belief that guides your life. To do so, visit NPR.org, where you can also see what over 19,000 others have written. This music, by the way, comes from Joan Tower's composition “Fanfares of the Uncommon Woman.”
For This I Believe, I'm Jay Allison.
(Soundbite of song, “Fanfares of the Uncommon Woman”)
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