Bo Nilsson was born in Skellefteå, and first drew notice as a composer at the age of 18 when his Zwei Stücke (Two Pieces) for flute, bass clarinet, percussion, and piano were performed in a 1956 West German Radio (WDR) “Musik der Zeit” concert in Cologne.
By 1957 Nilsson remained largely unknown in his own country, but had attracted considerable attention in Germany with a succession of small chamber-music compositions characterised by their refined and unusual instrumentation.
He submitted the score to the electronic-music studio at WDR in the hopes of having it produced there, and Gottfried Michael Koenig agreed to take on the role of "interpreter", even while expressing doubts about the composer's reliance on the "established style" of Stockhausen's Studien.
In fact, Nilsson had simply copied out formulas related to the integrals of rational functions, often with errors, from books belonging to his uncle Oka, a great lover of mathematics.
[10] Beginning with Entrée for orchestra and tape (1962), Nilsson turned to a style akin to late Romanticism, and later in the 1960s he wrote film and television scores, for example Hemsöborna (1966) and Röda Rummet.