Gérard Grisey was born in France in 1946. He showed an early interest in music, and began composing at the age of nine. He traveled to Germany to study music at the Conservatory of Trossingen (1963-1965), then returned to France to enroll in the Conservatoire de Paris, where he pursued a classic curriculum, receiving degrees in harmony, counterpoint, and fugue, and excelled in music history and piano accompaniment. At the same time, he took composition with Olivier Messiaen (1968-1972), studied with Henri Dutilleux at the École normale de musique (1968), and learned electroacoustic techniques with Jean-Étienne Marie (1969).

His residency at the Villa Médicis from 1972 to 1974 was the occasion of several important encounters, notably with poet Christian Guez Ricord, and discoveries, notably the music of Giacinto Scelsi. Classes with Ligeti and Stockhausen, and, to a lesser extent, with Xenakis, which he attended in 1972 during the Darmstadt Summer Course, would bolster his own musical passions and exert an enduring influence on his work.

In 1973, Grisey took part in the founding of Itinéraire, whose goal was to promote a nascent reperoire with specific needs through quality performances. A course in acoustics taught by Émile Leipp at the University of Paris VI (1974-1975) would lay the foundations of Grisey’s scientific approach to sound. Starting in 1982, he began an intensive teaching career, first at the University of California, Berkeley (until 1986) and then at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP), where he taught orchestration and composition. Grisey died on 11 November 1998 of a ruptured aneurysm.