Walter Zimmermann (born 15 April 1949) is a German composer associated with the Cologne School. Born in

Schwabach Schwabach () is a German city of about 40,000 inhabitants near Nuremberg in the centre of the region of Franconia in the north of Bavaria. The city is an autonomous administrative district (''kreisfreie Stadt''). Schwabach is also the name of th ...

, Germany, Zimmermann studied

composition Composition or Compositions may refer to: Arts and literature *Composition (dance), practice and teaching of choreography *Composition (language), in literature and rhetoric, producing a work in spoken tradition and written discourse, to include v ...

in Germany with Werner Heider and

Mauricio Kagel Mauricio Raúl Kagel (; 24 December 1931 – 18 September 2008) was an Argentine-German composer. Biography Kagel was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, into an Ashkenazi Jewish family that had fled from Russia in the 1920s . He studied music, his ...

, the theory of musical intelligence at the Institute of Sonology in

Utrecht Utrecht ( , , ) is the fourth-largest city and a municipality of the Netherlands, capital and most populous city of the province of Utrecht. It is located in the eastern corner of the Randstad conurbation, in the very centre of mainland Net ...

(now located in

The Hague The Hague ( ; nl, Den Haag or ) is a city and municipality of the Netherlands, situated on the west coast facing the North Sea. The Hague is the country's administrative centre and its seat of government, and while the official capital o ...

), and computer music at Colgate University in New York. Zimmermann's works are infused by a personal adaptation of minimal technique. Whereas many early American minimalist composers were influenced in their works by rock, jazz, and world musics, Zimmermann has drawn a great deal of inspiration from his

Franconia Franconia (german: Franken, ; Franconian dialect: ''Franggn'' ; bar, Frankn) is a region of Germany, characterised by its culture and Franconian languages, Franconian dialect (German: ''Fränkisch''). The three Regierungsbezirk, administrative ...

n heritage. A number of his works, particularly his groups of pieces known as ''Lokale Musik'', use the traditional music of this area as source material. These works frequently begin with melodic material derived from Franconian folk songs, which are rearranged and transformed in novel ways. In 1976, Zimmermann published a collection of interviews with American musicians and composers entitled ''Desert Plants: Conversations With 23 American Musicians.''

References

* Zimmermann, Walter (1976). ''Desert Plants: Conversations With 23 American Musicians.'' Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: A. R. C. Publications.

External links

Walter Zimmermann page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmermann, Walter 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers German classical composers 1949 births Living people German male classical composers 20th-century German composers 21st-century German composers 20th-century German male musicians 21st-century German male musicians People from Schwabach