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5 unusual facts about Bernd Alois Zimmermann


Bernd Alois Zimmermann

Die Soldaten Opera in four acts, libretto by the composer after the drama of the same name by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz (1965)

In the 60s, he received more attention and success as a composer (including a second scholarship to the Villa Massimo in 1963 and a fellowship in the Berlin Academy of the Arts), especially after his opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) finally premiered in 1965.

The combination and overlapping of layers of musical material from various time periods (from Medieval to Baroque and Classical to Jazz and Pop music) using advanced musical techniques is characteristic of Klangkomposition.

Jens Lindemann

He has given numerous world premières with orchestras including the North American première of Bernd Alois Zimmermann's concerto Nobody Knows with the Toronto Symphony.

Pierre Mariétan

Mariétan studied first at the Geneva Conservatory in 1955–60 with Marescotti, and later with, amongst others, Pierre Boulez, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, Gottfried Michael Koenig, Henri Pousseur, and Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his earliest works are squarely in the serialist camp (Muggler 2001).


Long Beach Opera

Several American premieres have been presented on the LBO stage, including King Roger by Karol Szymanowski, Mozart’s, Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter, Bernd Alois Zimmermann’s Turning, I Saw Great Injustice and John Cage’s Europeras 3&4 (issued in a commercial recording).

Marie Angel

She sings both operas in the standard repertoire as well as contemporary operas by such composers as Mauricio Kagel, Bruno Maderna, Michael Tippett, Harrison Birtwistle, Philip Glass, Louis Andriessen, Michael Nyman, Bernd Alois Zimmermann, and John Cage.

Radio opera

The genre declined after World War II, perhaps with the advent of television, although composers such as Dallapiccola, Pizzetti, Rota, Henze, Zimmermann, Maderna and Rasmussen continued to compose for the radio, as do 21st-century composers such as the Estonian Jüri Reinvere, Amy Kohn in America and Robert Saxton in Britain.


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