Walter Zimmermann. Nomade in den Zeiten

Walter Zimmermann, born on April 15, 1949, in Schwabach, Middle Franconia, received his first musical inspiration from his father. He learned to play the piano, violin, and oboe, and began experimenting with composition at the age of fourteen. From 1968 to 1970, he was a pianist with the ars nova ensemble nürnberg and studied composition with Werner Heider. From 1970 to 1973, he studied with Otto Laske at the Institute for Sonology in Utrecht. In 1975, during a tour of the United States, he conducted interviews with American musicians, which were collected in the book *Desert Plants* (Vancouver, 1976). From 1977 to 1984, he directed the Beginner Studios in Cologne, which he had founded. As a composition teacher, Zimmermann taught at the Conservatoire Royal de Liège from 1980 to 1984, in 1982 and 1984 at the Darmstadt Summer Courses, in 1988 at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, from 1990 to 1992 at the Karlsruhe University of Music, and since 1993 as a professor of composition at the Berlin University of the Arts. In 1987, he was a resident at the Villa Massimo in Rome. Since 2006, he has been a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts; in 2009, he was appointed Honorary Professor at the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing. Walter Zimmermann’s extensive and distinctive body of work opens up a wide-ranging panorama of cultural references. This book explores the diverse interconnections within Zimmermann’s musical world of ideas, through detailed analysis as well as the presentation of overarching connections. In doing so, the text—following the composer’s intentions—repeatedly builds bridges between sound and idea—bridges that, with Zimmermann, are always passable in both directions.

"It is captivating to read how this author writes about music, from which intellectual sources he draws, how he combines his findings (e.g. about levitation) with the description of Zimmermann's pieces, not by force, but out of the music. He finds correspondences, delicate links; as you read, you witness how music awakens thoughts and vice versa - how these give the music a resonating space. What a gifted man. I congratulate Walter Zimmermann on such a monograph." (Katharina Raabe)

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