Guo Wenjing was born on 1 February 1956, in Chongqing, Sichuan Province, in the south-west of China, where his parents worked at the local hospital. His family originated from a poor, rural setting in northern China. However, as members of the Chinese Communist Party, Guo’s parents escaped poverty after the victory of the People’s Liberation Army, settling in the south and establishing a new life for themselves. During the cultural revolution, when Chongqing, like other cities in China, saw frequent clashes and violence in the streets, Guo’s parents bought their 12-year old son a violin, with the hope of sheltering him from the volatile political situation. In this way, the cultural revolution gave rise to opportunities for Guo to establish a career as a musician.

In 1971, Guo became a member — first as a percussionist and later as a violinist — of a local song and dance group. One of the older members of this group became Guo’s violin teacher. The modestly-sized ensemble, comprising exclusively Western instruments, performed “model” operas (works of political propaganda comprising an unusual blend of Chinese opera and music inspired by the soundtracks of Hollywood films). The ensemble played from scores written in Western notation. Guo remained with the group for seven years, before leaving in the mid-1970s in order to focus on composition. His first compositions were works of “revolutionary” music, and were performed by the ensemble which he had recently left. Despite the limited abilities of the members, these experiences allowed Guo to refine his orchestration skills. Thanks to his musician friends, Guo was able to familiarise himself with Western classical music, secretly exchanging and listening to records which were forbidden in China at the time.

In 1977, shortly after the death of Mao Zedong, universities and schools re-opened. Western music gradually came once again to be studied in conservatories and performed in concert halls. In 1978, Guo was accepted at the Beijing Conservatory, where he, along with Tan Dun, Xiao-Song Qu, and Chen Qigang, studied composition with Li Yinghai and Su Xia. However, in 1983, after having married a fellow student at the conservatory without obtaining proper authorisation, Gui was obliged to return to Chongqing. Over the next seven years, he composed a number of scores for cinema and television productions. In 1990, he returned to Beijing as a professor of composition at the conservatory.

His student works for orchestra and chambre ensemble are marked by the rhythmic style of Bartók and the dark atmospheres of Shostakovich. His first success abroad came in the form of Suspended Ancient Coffins on the Cliffs in Sichuan (1983) for orchestra, premiered in Berkeley, California, a work that was heavily influenced by Béla Bartók and Krzysztof Penderecki. Other works from this time, such as Concerto for Violin (1986-1987) and the cantata Shu Dao Nan (1987), betray the persistent influence of Dimitri Shostakovich. International festivals dedicated to Chinese contemporary music helped Guo to establish his name abroad, e.g., in Hong Kong (1986) and Edinburgh (1987), and foreign ensembles began to programme his works.

Guo gradually came to abandon the effusive, romantic style of his early works in favour of a sophisticated style drawing upon elements from Chinese popular music. She Huo (1991), composed upon his return to Beijing and the first in a series of works commissioned by the Nieuw Ensemble in Amsterdam, makes heavy use of Chinese percussion instruments to create the atmosphere of a rural celebration. This was followed by Wolf Cub Village, a dark and powerful chambre opera that was premiered at the Holland Festival in 1994. This free adapation of A Madman’s Diary (Kuangren riji) by Lu Xun, for which Zeng Li created the libretto, has been performed in numerous festivals in Europe and Asia, and cemented Guo’s reputation as one of the most promising and innovative Chinese composers. His second opera, Night Banquet (Ye yan, 1998), a commission of the Almeida Theatre in London and the Hong Kong Arts Festival, has also been performed widely. In these two operas and in subsequent works, Guo focuses on key themes in Chinese folklore, including ghosts, sorcery, and other fantastic, mysterious events. His music is widely performed in international festivals, such as the Festival d’automne in Paris, Holland Festival, and others, from Beijing to Warsaw, and from Perth to New York. He has composed works for, among others, the Kronos Quartet, Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Modern, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, and the major orchestras in China.

In 1966, his first visit to the United States roused considerable interest. He spent several months in New York and taught at various universities throughout the USA. Despite numerous other sojourns abroad, Guo, in contrast to many of his colleagues, never aspired to abandon his home country and firmly establish a career in the West. He still lives and works in China, and in 2001, was named Co-director of the composition department of the Beijing Conservatory.

Guo has composed several concertos for Chinese instruments and works for Chinese percussion instruments, including Drama (1995) and Parade (2004). He also continues to explore theatrical music in the form of operas drawing upon the musical theatre traditions of Sichuan (e.g., Fenyiting, (2004) and Si Fan/The Inner Landscape (2016)) and Beijing (e.g., his large-scale trilogy on Chinese heroines comprising Mu Guiying (2003), Hua Mulan (2004), and Liang Hongyu (2008)). Premiered in Beijing, the latter three works were toured in Singapore and elsewhere in Asia, and later performed at the Holland Festival in 2008. In contrast, his operas Poet Li Bai (2007) and Luotuo Xiangzi [The Rickshaw], after Lao She (2014), combine the influences of Chinese music with romantic Western music, sometimes evocative of Puccini. This style characterises other works, including the orchestral ballet, Peony Pavilion (2008), which received a lukewarm critical reception upon its premiere in New York in 2015. Guo maintains that he composes music which is in line with the tastes of Chinese, and more broadly, Asian audiences.