Born in Langenthal (Switzerland) in 1939, he studied oboe while still a teenager with Emile Cassagnaud at the Conservatory of Berne and composition with Sándor Veress. In the late 1950s he studied piano with Yvonne LefŹbre and oboe with Pierre Pierlot in Paris. From 1961 to 1963 he studied composition with Pierre Boulez.
Being solo oboist of the Basler Orchester-Gesellschaft from 1959 to 1963, he won several First Prizes at international competitions, including those in Geneva (1959) and Munich (1961). These accolades paved the way for him to a worldwide solo career. His recordings have been honoured with the German Record Award, the Edison Award, the Grand Prix du Disque, the International Record Critics’ Award and the Diplôme d’honneur du prix mondial du disque. His repertoire includes both numerous old works for oboe which he himself has unearthed and pieces written specially for him by such famous composers as Luciano Berio, Elliot Carter, Frank Martin, Hans-Werner Henze, Witold Lutosławski, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Isang Yun.
His activities as a composer and conductor have equally been recognized throughout the world and honoured by numerous prizes, including the Composition Award of the Swiss Composers’ Union (1984), the Sonning Music Award of Copenhagen and the Frankfurt Music Award (1987), the Arts Award of the City of Basel (1989), the Ernst-von-Siemens Music Award (1991) and the Prix de Composition Musicale 1994 de la Fondation Prince Pierre de Monaco for his or-chestral composition (S)irató. In 1995, he won the Premio Abbiati of the Venice Biennale for Scardanelli-Zyklus. He was composer-in-residence of the Orchestra de la Suisse Romande (1993–94) and at the Lucern Festival (1998). He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Zürich in 1998.
His work comprises all genres in every possible instrumentation from stage works through orchestral, solo and chamber music works to numerous vocal works. He has also been inspired by a range of poets including Hölderlin, Trakl and Celan.
Heinz Holliger lives in Basel.

Selected works (since 1980): Not I, monodrama for soprano and tape to a text by Samuel Beckett (1978–80), Trema for solo viola (1981; version for solo violin – 1983), Vier Lieder ohne Worte for violin and piano (1982–83), Turm-Musik for solo flute, chamber orchestra and tape (1984), Zwei Liszt-Transkriptionen for orchestra (1986), Gesänge der Frühe after Schumann and Hölderlin for choir, orchestra and tape (1987), What Where, chamber opera according to a play by Samuel Beckett (1988), Scardanelli-Zyklus for solo flute, small orchestra, tape and mixed choir, a setting of poems by Friedrich Hölderlin (1975–91), (S)irat(ó), monody for large orchestra (1993), Lieder ohne Worte II for violin and piano (1985–94), Mileva-Lieder for soprano and piano with words by Mileva Demenga (1995), Dunkle Spiegel for vocal quintet, baritone and instrumental ensemble with words by various authors (1995), Sonate (in)solit(air)e for solo flute (1995–96), Schneewittchen, opera after Robert Walser (1998), Partita for Piano (1999), Vier Lieder for alto and orchestra to a text by Georg Trakl (1992–2001), Recicanto for viola and chamber orchestra (2000–01), Violin Concerto Hommage ą Louis Soutter (1993–2002), M’amounia for percussion and chamber ensemble (2002), Puneigä, ten songs for soprano and chamber ensemble set to poems by Anna Maria Bacher (2002), Sechs Lieder nach Gedichten von Christian Morgenstern for soprano and orchestra (2003), Partita (II) for Harp (2003–04).

Scardanelli-Zyklus
In 1806 Isaac Sinclair took his friend, thirty-six-years-old Friedrich Hölderlin to a clinic in Tübingen, because he was a ‘madman’. A year later Hölderlin was allowed out, as an incurably ill patient, who would not live longer than another three years at the most. He was taken into the house of a carpenter, Ernst Zimmer, and there, in a little turret, Hölderlin lived for another 37 years. He wrote rarely, generally to his relatives or at the request of the few erudite guests for whom the name of Hölderlin still meant something. The few poems from that period, when compared to the earlier texts, are shockingly simple, but in spite of that they are not accessible. It seems as if all pain, all desire, all personal feeling has died out in them. The world has achieved peace, because life has left it behind. The poet writes to his mother that she should find the minimal contact sufficient, ‘because that which I say I must say using as few words as possible, as I cannot now express myself in any other way.’
Heinz Holliger became interested in Hölderlin’s texts as a composer at the age of 36, which might be regarded as a significant biographical parallel. This work, which nearly 20 years later has at last been provisionally completed, includes – like a medieval codex – a great variety of compositions. Almost all the movements which make up the Scardanelli-Zyklus contain just the ‘few words’ – it is meager and quiet music. The numbers 37 (the year of madness) and 73 (Hölderlin’s life span) are constantly present in the structure of the composition. And although almost nothing happens in that music, it is a work filled with energy; but that energy is not positive, it is negative: it does not come from an accumulation of notes, but from their increasing reduction. The majority of sections might be described as études, exercises, which test the different stages of dying. For performers, this étude character is palpable when for instance in the flute part (which has strong associations with Hölderlin, who used to play that instrument) the composer always notes ‘exhalation’, wanting to achieve the sound produced when the lungs are empty. This is not
a lament over death, but the embodiment of flickering out, practising at dying while still alive.
Many mysteries surround the name Scardanelli – a pseudonym with which Hölderlin signed his last poems. Research has even revealed an Italian wizard of that name. Heinz Holliger has a different hypothesis on that subject: Hölderlin, who was an enthusiastic walker and lover of rivers, is supposed, during his stay in Switzerland, to have reached the place near Reichenau where the Vorderrhein joins the Hinterrhein. This place was commonly known as Scardan, and thus could serve as the origin of the name Scardanelli.
The Scardanelli-Zyklus, in which Heinz Holliger placed himself within exceptional constraints and which was extremely exhausting for him personally, belongs among the most important musical compositions of the end of the twentieth century. In the days when the talk everywhere is about the message, communication, exchange and networks, the Scardanelli-Zyklus brings one of those ‘autistic’ moments which the chattering society would prefer to forget. In contrast, listening to this music, particularly during a live performance, is an experience as unique as the experience of the polar night.