To choose a composer who died almost half a century ago to be the composer in residence of a festival may seem highly inappropriate. The fact that his 100th birthday is coming up isn’t really enough justification. But the fact remains, there are few composers who have dealt with time as intensely as this man: Bernd Alois Zimmermann (1918–1970). The topic led him to completely new concepts, but also cast a dark shadow over his life. Furthermore, he lived through the World War, and felt the nuclear threat of the Cold War intensely. His composing career was delayed, even though he did manage to find work as a musician after the War, he nevertheless felt unprepared and continued to study. And when he finally felt ready to embark on his career, he thrust some of his younger colleagues like Karlheinz Stockhausen into the spotlight. Zimmermann, the eldest of the younger generation, as he said, came so early but was already out-dated.

But perhaps exactly that was his great advantage. He didn’t try to mix in with the avant-garde circus of innovation and he always remembered those musicians who went out of fashion with the avant-garde: Stravinsky, for example, or jazz. Although he had a burning interest for new developments, he absorbed them and discussed them, but he interpreted the topics that occupied him deeply in his own way. At the centre was the confrontation with his combatant era, but also the injustice in the world. The Catholic from Cologne left Christianity and the Church in a committed way.

The Old Testament text Song of Solomon permeates his entire oeuvre as a leitmotif. As a preacher in the desert, he may well have felt misunderstood at times by his contemporaries. But the fact that his music continues to resonate to this day ultimately proves him right.

He himself said he was «contrary» and faltering; he also describes himself as «a Rhenish blend of monk and Dionysus». Yes, this too: his music is enormously sensual and (though not always to the same degree) directly accessible. His love of theatre, literature and the staging of music are clearly evident. He was one of the first to combine different styles, for instance jazz with the twelve-tone technique; he incorporated quotes, collaging the various elements. He designed the image of a «spherical shape of time» where different time levels are present simultaneously. This time sphere is now also at the Musikfestival Bern, where different time modes, measured, stretched, compressed, different rhythms and tempos, but also different generations and epochs meet.