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Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman (17 March 178529 October 1853), known as Pierre Zimmermann and Joseph Zimmermann, was a French pianist, composer, and music teacher.
Alkan-Zimmerman International Music AssociationCimetières de France et ailleurs: ''Cimetière d’Auteuil''
brief biography of Zimmerman and photo of his grave {{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmerman, Pierre 1785 births 1853 deaths French male classical composers French Romantic composers 19th-century French male classical pianists French music educators Piano pedagogues French opera composers Male opera composers Conservatoire de Paris faculty Conservatoire de Paris alumni 19th-century classical composers 19th-century French composers
Pierre-Joseph-Guillaume Zimmerman (17 March 178529 October 1853), known as Pierre Zimmermann and Joseph Zimmermann, was a French pianist, composer, and music teacher.
Biography
Zimmerman was born inParis
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
on March 19, 1785, as the son of a piano maker. He attended the Paris Conservatory
The Conservatoire de Paris (), also known as the Paris Conservatory, is a college of music and dance founded in 1795. Officially known as the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP), it is situated in the avenue ...
in 1798, studying piano with François-Adrien Boieldieu
François-Adrien Boieldieu (, also ) (16 December 1775 – 8 October 1834) was a French composer, mainly of operas, often called "the French Mozart". His date of birth was also cited as December 15 by his biographer and writer Lucien Augé de Lass ...
; while a student there, he won first prizes for piano in 1800 (Friedrich Kalkbrenner
Friedrich Wilhelm Michael Kalkbrenner (2–8 November 1785 – 10 June 1849), also known as ''Frédéric Kalkbrenner'', was a pianist, composer, piano teacher and piano manufacturer. German by birth, Kalkbrenner studied at the Conservatoire de ...
came second)Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 5th ed., 1951 and harmony in 1802. He would later study under Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini ( ; ; 8 or 14 SeptemberWillis, in Sadie (Ed.), p. 833 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the gre ...
. Zimmerman became a piano assistant at the Conservatory in 1811 and a full professor there in 1816, serving until 1848; he refused a position as a professor of counterpoint
In music, counterpoint is the relationship between two or more musical lines (or voices) which are harmonically interdependent yet independent in rhythm and melodic contour. It has been most commonly identified in the European classical tradi ...
and fugue
In music, a fugue () is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject (a musical theme) that is introduced at the beginning in imitation (repetition at different pitches) and which recurs frequently in the c ...
in 1821. Among his students were Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (18 ...
(who married one of his daughters), Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', whi ...
, César Franck
César-Auguste Jean-Guillaume Hubert Franck (; 10 December 1822 – 8 November 1890) was a French Romantic composer, pianist, organist, and music teacher born in modern-day Belgium.
He was born in Liège (which at the time of his birth was p ...
, Charles-Valentin Alkan
Charles-Valentin Alkan (; 30 November 1813 – 29 March 1888) was a French Jewish composer and virtuoso pianist. At the height of his fame in the 1830s and 1840s he was, alongside his friends and colleagues Frédéric Chopin and Franz Lisz ...
, Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas '' Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868).
Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de ...
, Louis Lacombe
Pierre Louis Trouillon-Lacombe (26 November 1818 – 30 September 1884) was a French pianist and composer.Meyerbeer 1853-1855 2002 Page 752 Giacomo Meyerbeer, Folkart Wittekind, Sabine Henze-Daring - 2002 "M. Lacombe: Der Pianist und Komponist P ...
, Alexandre Goria
Alexandre Édouard Goria (21 January 1823 – 6 July 1860) was a French virtuoso pianist and composer recognised among amateurs enthusiasts for his numerous salon pieces of different styles, which enjoyed great success at their time. The number ...
and Lefébure-Wély. In 1842 he denied Conservatory admission to 13-year old Louis Moreau Gottschalk
Louis Moreau Gottschalk (May 8, 1829 – December 18, 1869) was an American composer and pianist, best known as a virtuoso performer of his own romantic piano works. He spent most of his working career outside the United States.
Life and car ...
without an audition on account of Gottschalk's American nationality, commenting that "America is a country of steam engines". Zimmerman was often assisted in his teaching by Gounod.
Zimmerman wrote two operas, ''L'enlèvement'' (Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Paris opera company which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with – and for a time took the name of – its chief rival, the Comédie-Italienne ...
, 1830) and ''Nausicaa'' (never staged). He also composed two piano concerto
A piano concerto is a type of concerto, a solo composition in the classical music genre which is composed for a piano player, which is typically accompanied by an orchestra or other large ensemble. Piano concertos are typically virtuoso showpiec ...
s, one piano sonata
A piano sonata is a sonata written for a solo piano. Piano sonatas are usually written in three or four movements, although some piano sonatas have been written with a single movement ( Scarlatti, Liszt, Scriabin, Medtner, Berg), others with t ...
, and numerous other works for piano. His most important legacy is considered his ''Encyclopédie du pianiste'', a complete method of piano playing, including a treatise on harmony and counterpoint.
He died in Paris on October 29, 1853, at the age of 68, and is now buried in the Auteuil Cemetery in the 16th arrondissement.
His daughter Juliette married Édouard Dubufe
Édouard Louis Dubufe (31 March 1819 – 11 August 1883) was a French portrait painter.
Biography
Dubufe was born in Paris. His father was the painter Claude Marie Paul Dubufe, who gave him his first art lessons. Later he studied with ...
.
References
Sources
Grave in cimetière d'Auteuil. *,_Cimetière_d'Auteuil,_Paris.jpg.html){kind=link}
Don Randel Don Michael Randel (born December 9, 1940) is an American musicologist, specializing in the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Spain and France. He is currently the Chair of the Board of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a trustee ...
, ''The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music''. Harvard, 1996, p. 1010-1011.
External links
Alkan-Zimmerman International Music Association
brief biography of Zimmerman and photo of his grave {{DEFAULTSORT:Zimmerman, Pierre 1785 births 1853 deaths French male classical composers French Romantic composers 19th-century French male classical pianists French music educators Piano pedagogues French opera composers Male opera composers Conservatoire de Paris faculty Conservatoire de Paris alumni 19th-century classical composers 19th-century French composers