At the outbreak of the Spanish civil in 1936, Cristóbal Halffter and his family emigrated to Velbert in Germany, where they remained until 1939 ;. It was upon their return to Madrid in 1942 that Cristóbal, the nephew of composers Rodolfo (1900-1987) and Ernesto (1905-1989) Halffter Escriche commenced his music studies via private instruction. In 1947, he enrolled in the city’s conservatoire under the tutelage of the composition professor Conrado del Campo (1878-1953). In 1951, alongside an Advanced Degree in Composition, he was awarded an Outstanding Distinction in the field for his Scherzo orchestral and the creation, that December, of his Sonata para piano. Nevertheless, it was the June 1952 premiere of his Antífona pascual a la Virgen ‘Regina cœli’ that truly marked Halffter’s professional debut. It was strengthened in 1953 when he obtained the National Music Prize (an honour he once again received in 1989) for his Concierto para piano y orquesta. Halffter then became an active contributor to Radio Nacional de España’s classical music programmes and launched his career as an international orchestral conductor over the course of which he directed the Manuel de Falla Orchestra (from 1955 to 1963), and was the acting overseer of the Orquesta de Radiotelevisión Española from 1965 until he retired in 2010.

Following the staging of his ballet Jugando al toro in the United Kingdom, and via his connection to Alexander Tansman, alongside whom the composer pursued specialised studies from 1959 to 1961, Halffter was introduced to Universal Editions who became the sole publishers of his work ;. This contract secured the composer’s expanding international activity, as did the inclusion of his work [Formantes (Móvil para dos pianos)] at the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM) Festival in London in 1962. Within the following year, his pieces were also referenced at two of the most prominent contemporary music forums of the time: the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (Formantes again) and the commissioning by Donaueschinger Musiktage of Sinfonía para tres grupos instrumentales. In 1962, Halffter was appointed Professor of Composition and Musical Forms at the Madrid Conservatoire, where he was simultaneously director from 1964 to 1966 until his resignation. Halffter’s academic career continued as Chair of the Music Department at the University of Navarre (1969-1978), Chair of Composition at the Musikhochschule de Berne (1987-1989). He was also a professor at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt (1976 et 1978), creative consultant to the Department of Electronic Music at Heinrich-Strobel-Stiftung from 1979 to 1982, and he presided over the Spanish section of the ISCM from 1976 to 1978.

Cristóbal Halffter is the only Spanish composer whose collected publications are held at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel. Among the distinctions conferred upon him are the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1968) – Commandeur en 1986 –, Académicien des Beaux-Arts de l’Espagne (1983) and member of l’Akademie der Künste de Berlin (1985) ;. He received the Montaigne-Preis from the Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. Hamburg (1994), the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Contemporary Music (2009) and the Kulturpreis der Stadt Kiel (2014). Halffter authored