Creating music that gives meaning and hope to life

Composers make choices, choices beyond number. During the 20th century perhaps the biggest choice was: follow your head or your heart?

Charles Argersinger, a WSU professor of music and alumnus of the prestigious artists’ retreat Yaddo, chose his heart, and that has made all the difference.

On the door outside Argersinger’s office in Kimbrough Hall is a quote by the late 19th century French composer Claude Debussy: “There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.”

The Debussy quote goes on, “I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.”

But for much of the 20th century, “modern” music was an academic art, Argersinger said. While the head/heart dichotomy is a gross generalization, he said, it is one way to understand the schism that occurred during the last century of American contemporary music.

Math vs. emotion
Starting in the 19th century and taking hold in the 20th, he said, composers, especially composers inside the academy, began creating symphonic and chamber music that was based more on mathematical concepts than emotional resonance. Instead of creating music out of harmonic dissonance leading eventually to consonance, this new music rejected the need for resolution and reveled in that. While the unresolved dissonance captured the angst of the 20th century — with two world wars and the threat of nuclear war literally shaking our world — it did not capture the eternal hope that Argersinger believes gives meaning to our lives and our music.

“I think the power of music — the great attraction of music — is the fact that it is an abstract analogy for our lives,” he said. Conflict, from small-scale annoyance over a parking ticket to divorce to war, is dissonance, he said, and the human impulse is to strive for resolution, to make order out of chaos.

“Life consists of an endless series of dissonance and resolution on a large and small scale,” he said, and great music presents the listener with a wonderful analogy for that struggle. “We are drawn to great music because it nourishes us,” he said.

Reviving contemporary music
From teaching nonmusic majors and graduate-level musicians, to composing award-winning brass fanfares and critically acclaimed piano concertos, Argersinger is doing everything he can to help breathe new life into contemporary music, life that builds on the classical tradition of diatonic composition.

Music cannot be a purely intellectual pursuit based on mathematical relationships and theory, as much modern symphony music is, he said. Argersinger believes passionately that passion, encompassing both intuition and emotion, must be part of the equation as well.

“All composers tend to be philosophers,” he said. “You have to make some major decisions about what you want to say to the world and how you want to say it.”

And Argersinger has cast his lot with creating beauty in music. “The concept of beauty is something I think is worth devoting a lifetime to,” he said.

For more information about Argersinger or to listen to his music, visit http://www.charlesargersinger.com

Next Story

Recent News

Colombian women’s rights pioneer got her start in Pullman

Paulina Gómez Vega’s experience at Washington State College in the early 1920s set her on a path that made her an education leader and an influential voice for women’s rights back home.

Provost finalists visiting the week of April 1

Finalists in the process of interviewing for the position of provost and executive vice president will present to the public during their visits to WSU next week.

McCoy named interim WSU athletic director

A widely recognized leader in intercollegiate athletics, McCoy will serve while a national search is conducted for the next athletic director.

WSU to review administrative structure

President Kirk Schulz used his annual State of the University Address to highlight both achievements and challenges while also announcing a planned review of WSU’s administrative structure and academic programs.