Beat Furrer was born in Switzerland in 1954. He began studying piano in his home city’s conservatory and moved to Vienna in 1975 to study composition with Roman Haubenstock-Ramati and orchestral conducting with Otmar Suitner.

In 1985, he founded Klangforum Wien (known in its early days as the Society of Acoustic Art) and served as its artistic director until July 1992. Since 1991, he has been a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz. From 2006 to 2009, he was a guest professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Frankfurt am Main.

Currently, he is a professor of composition at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Graz.

Visual arts, literature, and jazz formed the backdrop against which Furrer’s early works were composed. Some of his techniques can therefore be seen as resembling, by analogy, the methods of visual art; for example, through the superposition of layers that progressively surround an object, or revisiting the same structure (Retour an dich, trio, 1986), or the effects of chiaroscuro (Streichquartett n° 1, 1984). This work of extreme differentiation among sounds, gestures, and textures branches out over and over, at times weaving itself into intense fabrics of sound, or sometimes, to the contrary, scattering into near-nothingness, as in Studie 2 - à un moment de terre perdue for ensemble 1990 or Nuun, concerto for piano and orchestra, 1996. The tendency to leave certain elements unmoored, or to allow figures to develop autonomously within a narrow frame, remains one of the hallmarks of Furrer’s work even now. Most often, musical form in his compositions arises from layered processes, from overlapping, or from progressive unveilings, filtering or distortion mechanisms, or refined materials - at times torn asunder by emphatic gestures that crop up in all their strangeness (Still, 1998). Finally, the human voice, from muttered sound effects to full language, occupies a decisive place in his compositions. Instruments, like voices, often hew to spoken enunciation. The flute in Invocation (2002-2003), plays the central role alongside the singer and the actress. Notable among his works of musical theater are his first opera, Die Blinden, which premiered in 1989 at the Wien Modern festival, Begehren (2001) and Fama (2005), described as Hörtheater (“hearing theater”), and Wüstenbuch (2010). His opera La Bianca Notte, based on texts by Dino Campara, premiered in Hamburg in 2015. Kaleidoscopic memories, for double bass and electronics, premiered in 2016 at IRCAM’s ManiFeste festival in a performance by Uli Fussenegger. In 2019, his latest opera, Violetter Schnee, with libretto by Händl Klaus, premiered in Berlin at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden.

• 1984 Junge Generation in Europa Composition Competition Prize
• 1989 Young Composers Forum Prize, Cologne
• 1992 Siemens Fellowship
• 1993 Music Prize of the City of Duisburg
• 1996 Composer-in-Residence at the Semaines musicales de Lucerne
• 2004 City of Vienna Music Prize
• 2005 Appointed member of the Berlin Academy of Arts (Music Section)
• 2006 Golden Lion for FAMA at the Venice Biennale
• 2014 Grand Austrian State Prize
• 2018 Ernst Von Siemens Foundation Music Prize