Born in Warwickshire (England) in 1939, Jonathan Harvey sang in the choir of St. Michael’s College, Tenbury, then studied music at St. John’s College, Cambridge. He held doctorates from the Universities of Glasgow and Cambridge. On the advice of Benjamin Britten, Harvey studied composition with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller, both of whom had been students of Schoenberg, and learned the techniques of twelve-tone composing. From 1969 to 1970, he was a Princeton University Harkness Fellow, where he met Milton Babbitt, an encounter that would influence his work considerably. Although electronic music technologies were still in their infancy then, they were already opening up a new avant-garde dimension for composition: sound exploration. Meeting Stockhausen was another decisive moment in Harvey’s career, guiding him in his learning of studio techniques; the two composers agreed that electronics made it possible to push past the physical limitations of traditional sound sources. They also converged in seeking ways to connect the rational and the mystical, the scientific and the intuitive. In 1975, Harvey published a book on Stockhausen’s work.

In the early 1980s, Pierre Boulez invited Jonathan Harvey to work at IRCAM, where, among other pieces, he composed Mortuos Plango, Vivis Voco (for tape),Bhakti (for ensemble and electronics), Advaya (for cello and electronics), and String Quartet n° 4 (with live electronics). He also encountered spectral music during this time, a movement he came to believe was decisive in the evolution of contemporary music. Harvey was convinced that electronic sound was a kind of opening toward transcendent, spiritual dimensions of reality.

Harvey composed in nearly every genre, including music for a capella choir, large orchestra (Tranquil Abiding, White as Jasmine, and Madonna of Winter and Spring), chamber orchestra (String Quartets, Soleil noir / Chitra, and Death of Light, Light of Death), ensemble, and solo instruments. He is considered to be one of the most imaginative composers of electroacoustic music. His first opera, Passion and Resurrection (1981), was the subject of a BBC documentary titled The Challenge of the Passion; the second, Inquest of Love, commissioned by the English National Opera, premiered in a performance conducted by Mark Elder in 1993; the third, Wagner Dream, commissioned by De Nederlandse Opera, the Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, the Holland Festival and IRCAM, premiered in 2007.

From 2005 to 2008, Harvey was a composer in residence with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, which premiered his Body Mandala, …towards a pure land, and most notably Speakings in 2008 (commissioned by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, IRCAM, and Radio France).

Harvey received many commissions from around the world and is one of the most regularly performed composers today. His pieces have been performed by ensembles including the Ensemble Modern, the Ensemble intercontemporain, Asko, the Nieuw Ensemble (Amsterdam), and Ictus (Brussels) in festivals such as Musica (Strasbourg), Ars Musica (Brussels), Musica Nova (Helsinki), Acanthes and Agora (France), as well as in many major contemporary music venues. Nearly two hundred performances of his work are performed or broadcast each year, and some eighty recordings of his work are available on CD.

Harvey held honorary doctorates from the Universities of Southampton, Sussex, Bristol, and Huddersfield, and was a member of the Academy of Europe. In 1999, he published two books on inspiration and spirituality. A handbook of his work, written by Arnold Whittall, was published by Faber & Faber that same year (a French translation, published by Editions Ircam, was also released in 1999). Two years later, John Palmer published a lengthier work, titled Jonathan Harvey’s Bhakti (Edwin Mellen Press).

From 1977 to 1993, Jonathan Harvey taught music at the University of Sussex, where he remained as an honorary professor. From 1995 to 2000, he taught in the Stanford University Music Department and was a guest professor at Imperial College London and an honorary member of the faculty of St. John’s College, Cambridge.

In 1993, he was awarded the prestigious Britten Composition Prize; he won the 2007 Giga-Hertz Award for his body of electronic compositions; his Speakings won the Prince Pierre de Monaco Prize. He was the first British composer to receive the Grand Prix Charles Cros. From May 2009 to May 2010, Harvey’s work was celebrated the world over in a series of concerts and festivals dedicated to him, and in new recordings and portraits. The BBC Symphony Orchestra celebrated his work in its Total Immersion Series in January 2012.