Music TheoryPrint

HE

Heinz Werner Zimmermann

Heinz Werner Zimmermann (11 August 1930 – 25 January 2022) was a German composer, focused on contemporary sacred music. He was professor of composition at the Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule and the

Heinz Werner Zimmermann (11 August 1930 – 25 January 2022) was a German composer, focused on contemporary sacred music. He was professor of composition at the Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule and the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts, and held several honorary doctorates from the Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, U.S., and from Leipzig University. He is known for church music influenced by jazz, such as motets for choir with plucked bass. Life Zimmermann was born in Freiburg im Breisgau and had his first composition instruction from 1946 to 1948 with Julius Weismann. He studied from 1950 to 1954 at the Kirchenmusikalisches Institut Heidelberg (Institute for Church Music) in Heidelberg, with Wolfgang Fortner. After passing his examinations at the Freiburg Conservatory, supervised by Harald Genzmer, he became Fortner’s successor in Heidelberg immediately. Here he maintained close contacts with the musicologist Thrasybulos Georgiades, whose rhythm and language studies influenced him the most, along with his occupation with American spirituals and jazz. From 1963 to 1976, Zimmermann was director of the Spandauer Kirchenmusikschule (Spandau school of church music)

Era
Post-War
Lived
1930–2022
From
Germany
Born in
Freiburg im Breisgau · died Oberursel
Known as
composer, university teacher

Contemporaries

Composers of the same nationality whose working lives overlapped — computed across all 11,984 dated composers in this library, not taken from any single article.