Encouraged by his father's love of music, Anhalt developed a good ear for harmony, and taught himself to play the violin.
[10] His father's financial troubles, his half-sister's birth in 1935, and tension between him and his step mother led Anhalt to move again a few years later to stay with his maternal grandparents.
[9] At about that time, Anhalt overheard László Gyopár, a peer from a neighboring school, play a piece he had composed himself at the piano.
[11] Anhalt studied piano with Kodaly at the Franz Liszt Academy of Music; he graduated with exceptional marks in 1941.
[13] In 1942, during the Second World War, Anhalt and his best friend at the academy were both forced to enter a forced-labour brigade for young Jewish men.
[17] Anhalt met George Rochberg at an International Conference of Composers at the Stratford Festival in Ontario during the summer of 1960, and the two became friends.
[19] Anhalt's mixed work schedule of administration, composition, and teaching was one he carried with him to Kingston, Ontario in 1971 when he became the head of Queen's University's Department of Music.
[22] Anhalt's early composing focused on a variety of works for chorus, solo voice, ensembles, and instrumental soloists.
Anhalt also adopted a more flexible syntax, as well as a larger musical vocabulary to create new vocal and instrumental sounds.
Its theme is the pursuit of God and meaning,[24] and is based on the life of one of the earliest French women to settle in Canada, Marie de l’Incarnation.
[24] Anhalt described this "musical pageant" as an exploration into the spiritual and personal aspects of a man, depicting how these supply meaning and significance to his actions.
In about 1967 Anhalt had started studies of the reflection of personalty through the voice in the composition classes he taught; he concentrated on this research while on his first sabbatical leave from 1976 to 1977.
[28] Rhythm, theatre, poetry, performing techniques, sound, speech, and the roots of language and music are explored, their components interconnected, as well as their usage are examined.
[24] The publication of his work Alternative Voices and the finalization of Winthrop occurred in the same year that Anhalt retired from university teaching,.