After completing a Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1979 with Dominick Argento, Charles Argersinger went on to teach at California State University, DePaul University, and at Washington State University where he is presently Coordinator of Composition and Theory. Currently he serves on the national council of the Society of Composers Inc. (SCI) as the Co-Chair of the Pacific Northwest region. Among his awards is the 1995 United Nations first prize for a brass fanfare for the 50th anniversary of the U.N. His Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra was recorded by members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Contemporary Chamber Players of the University of Chicago...
In an era often dominated by the exercise of compositional technique for its own sake, Charles Argersinger has devoted his career to writing music that resonates in the psyche of the listener, drawing together symbols of past and present with more abstract universal gestures of musical experience. Striving for meaning that transcends the syntax of the music's surface, his works seek an equilibrium of intellect, emotion, and intuition. They mirror his long-standing interests in such diverse realms as Greek mythology, medieval and renaissance music, Jungian theories of the unconscious, and astronomy. The course of his philosophy flows naturally from his own humanistic views, and reflects his lineage as a composer. As a student of Dominick Argento, Grant Fletcher, Paul Fetler, and Ronald LoPresti, who were in turn students of Hugo Weisgall, Ernst Krenek, Paul Hindemith, and Bernard Rogers, Argersinger is guided by aesthetic beliefs which spring from the compositional genetic code he inherited.
- Excerpted from the composer's website.
