Born in 1949 in Schwabach (Franconia), he started his musical education by playing the oboe, violin and piano. He studied composition with Werner Heider in Nuremberg, at the same time working as a pianist in Heider's ensemble 'ars nova' (1968-70). He briefly attended Mauricio Kagel's New Music Courses in Cologne. In 1970-73 he studied simultaneously at the Institute of Sonology in Utrecht and at the Jaap-Kunst ethnological centre in Amsterdam. He also studied computer music in Hamilton, u.s. (1974). He returned to the United States in 1975 and 1976 to conduct ethnomusicological research in several locations, including an Indian reservation in Montana. In 1975, in Vancouver, he published his first book Desert Plants (a series of interviews with American composers). In 1977 he founded the Beginner Studio in Cologne, the venue of regular concerts of new music which he organized there till 1984. In 1993 he organized the 'Anarchic Harmony' Festival in Frankfurt-am-Mein to celebrate John Cage's 80th birthday.ü
From 1982 he has taught composition at the Liège Conservatory, the International Summer Courses of New Music in Darmstadt (1982-84), the Royal Conservatory in the Hague (1988) and in Karlsruhe (1990-92). In 1992-93 he was a visiting professor at the Folkwanghochschule, and since 1993 has been a professor at the Berliner Akademie der Künste.
His honours include the Fcrderpreis awarded by the City of Cologne (1980), First Prize 'Ensemblia' (Mönchengladbach, 1981), the Schneider-Schott Preis (1989), and the Prix Italia (1990).c

Selected works (since 1980): Riuti for percussion (1980), Keuper. String Quartet (1980), Ephemer. Piano Trio (1981), Abgeschiedenheit for piano (1982), Lösung for viola, cello and double-bass (1983), Glockenspiel for percussion (1983), Klangfaden for bass clarinet, harp and glockenspiel (1983), Saitenspiel for 18 instruments (1983), Die Blinden, opera after Maeterlinck (1984), Wüstenwanderung for piano (1986), cber die Dörfer, opera to a libretto by Handke (1985/86), Fragmente der Liebe for saxophone and string quartet (1987), The Paradoxes of Love for soprano and soprano saxophone (1987), Lied im Wüstenvogelton for bass flute and piano (1987), Ataraxia for piano and orchestra (1988), Geduld und Gelegenheit for cello and piano (1989), The Echoing Green for violin and piano (1989), Hyperion, opera with libretto after Hölderlin (1990), Festina lente for string quartet (1990), Die Sorge geht über den Fluss for violin (1991), Diastasis (a) /Diastema (b) for two orchestras without conductor (1992), Distentio. String Trio (1992), Schatten der Ideen 1. Octet (1992), Schatten der Ideen II. Piano Quartet (1993), Schatten der Ideen III for button accordion (1994), Singbarer Rest for nine high voices and sampler (1993), Shadows of Cold Mountain for three tenor recorders (1993), Ursache & Vorwitz for instruments and tape (1994), Kindheitsblock for viola and celeste (1994), Ein wenig Grazie for piano (1994), Neue Apologie des Buchstaben B for flute, clarinet and string trio (1994), Shadows of Cold Mountain 2 for violin, bandoneon, piano and two sine-wave generators (1995), Parasit/Paraklet for clarinet, string quartet and tape (1995), The Edge for soprano, violin, cello, piano and tape (1995), Clinamen I Epikur-Transkriptionen for six orchestral groups (1996), Ba'le de la Conquista for flute, oboe and percussion (1996).

Lied im Wüstenvogelton. Desert imagery has long since had a strong appeal for Walter Zimmermann, partly because his highly individual voice is one of the most unaccountably neglected ones in the middle generation of German composers. He called his book of interviews with American composers Desert Plants, because they had demonstrated to him how to remain true to himself in hard times. The Lied im Wüstenvogelton (in a free translation 'song in the manner of a desert bird') for bass flute and piano takes its title from a line in one of Nietzsche's poems, which similarly deals, in an allegorical manner, with survival in isolation. The piece is, therefore, aurally a little condensed and rather bleak. However, there is no trace of self-pity. On the contrary, every melodic fragment, even those whose descending chromatic profile has always been associated with musical pathos, is sharply contoured and resilient. In some moments the music is like a homage to Morton Feldman, one of the greatest individualists of American music of the late 20th century who died in the same year as the Lied was written (Walter Zimmermann published Feldman's Essays). Duration: ca 13'.
Richard Toop