Brian Ferneyhough was born in Coventry, England, on 16 January 1943. His experiences of music were in Coventry’s marching band and brass band, in which, among other things, he played the trumpet. He attended the Birmingham School of Music and then the Royal Academy of Music in London, where he studied composition with Lennox Berkeley. In 1968, he traveled to Amsterdam to study with Ton de Leeuw, and then to Basel, where he studied with Klaus Huber. His compositions, notably his Sonatas, were honored in the Gaudeamus Competition for three years running (1968-70); in 1974 the ISCM awarded his Time and Motion Study III a special prize for the best work submitted in all categories. That year, several of his compositions were performed at the Festival de Royan, affirming his reputation as one of the most original composers and outstanding personalities of his generation.

Ferneyhough served as assistant to Klaus Huber at the Musikhochschule of Freiburg-im-Breisgau in 1973, where he remained until 1986, when he spent a year teaching at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague (Netherlands). He taught at the University of California, San Diego (USA) from 1987 to 1999, and then was appointed to a position at Stanford University. Ferneyhough has also given lectures and workshops around the world, including the Summer Courses at Darmstadt from 1984 to 1996, and, since 1990, at the Fondation Royaumont. He has also been a visiting professor at the Royal Conservatory of Stockholm, the California Institute of the Arts, the University of Chicago, and Harvard University (2007-2008), as well as at the Civica Scuola di Milano, the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Durham, and numerous other universities in North America. He regularly teaches courses at IRCAM in its Cursus program. In 2007, Ferneyhough was awarded the Siemens Prize and in 2012, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Goldsmiths College of the University of London.

His work is published by Peters in London, and his manuscripts are housed by the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel.