The Bernd Alois Zimmermann catalog raisonné
With the catalog of works by Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918-1970), Schott Music and the Akademie der Künste Berlin are publishing the first comprehensive catalog of works by a composer of the second half of the 20th century compiled according to historical-critical methods.
Around 350 surviving, lost, unfinished and fragmentary works are listed in this volume of over 1300 pages, edited by Heribert Henrich. In addition to the presentation of musical sources, the work entries also include first publications of Zimmermann's letters, notes and calendar entries with all relevant passages for the respective work.The catalog raisonné also contains 23 color illustrations of autographs. It is part of the scholarly cataloging of the Bernd Alois Zimmermann Archive of the Akademie der Künste Berlin and is based on preliminary work by the late Zimmermann researcher Klaus Ebbeke.
From the foreword: "In hardly any other epoch did an avant-garde (...) appear on the scene that broke so vehemently with the past and strove for radical innovations in tonal language and compositional technique. The representatives of this musical upheaval went to great lengths to explain and justify their own actions, especially as the attacks to which they initially found themselves exposed were overwhelmingly massive and vehement. At the same time, there was also a pronounced sense of competition within this group of innovators, for example when it came to claims to priority. In this way, a form of speaking and writing about composed music emerged that was determined to no small extent by tactical considerations. However, this discourse (...) pushed itself very strongly in front of the musical phenomenon itself (...)"
Heribert Henrich, Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Bernd Alois Zimmermann und ihrer Quellen, collaboration by Klaus Ebbeke, 1326 p., linen, € 199.00, Bulkhead, Mainz 2014, ISBN 978-3-7957-0688-3
