He is known for operas, such as Stallerhof on a libretto by the author of the play, Franz Xaver Kroetz, and film music including Schlöndorff's Eine Liebe von Swann.

He continued his studies of composition with Josef Friedrich Doppelbauer and Hans Werner Henze.

His opera Stallerhof, to a libretto of Franz Xaver Kroetz based on his own play, was premiered at the first Munich Biennale in 1988, as a co-production with the Staatstheater Wiesbaden.

A review of the opera in a production of the Theater Luzern remarks: Kroetz's Stallerhof is a work about inability to communicate, which opens space for music.

Gerd Kühr's music serves the function of expressing the feelings and situations in which people find themselves.