Born in Yonkers, New York, Martirano received his undergraduate degree in 1951 from Oberlin College, where he studied composition with Herbert Elwell.
Between 1959 and 1964, Martirano received commissions, awards, and fellowships from the Guggenheim, Ford, Koussevitzky, and Fromm Foundations, as well as from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and Brandeis University.
Many of Martirano's early works incorporate twelve-tone compositional techniques as well as jazz, vernacular, and multimedia idioms.
[2] In 1969, Salvatore Martirano, along with a group of engineers and musicians at the University of Illinois, began work on the design and construction of a musical electronic instrument.
The instrument, named the SAL-MAR Construction, is a hybrid system in which TTL logical circuits (small and medium scale integration) drive analog modules, such as voltage-controlled oscillators, amplifiers and filters.