[1][2] Stanko Horvat graduated from the Music Academy in Zagreb in 1956 where he studied composition in the class of Stjepan Šulek.
He has had a number of important public functions (artistic director of the Music Biennale Zagreb 1985–89; President of the Croatian Composers' Society, 1974–79, etc.).
He is a member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts and has received numerous awards and much recognition for his work.
After studying in Paris – and under Leibowitz's influence – he turned to dodecaphony, serialism and other contemporary composition techniques.
His works reveal a desire for reconciliation of the contemporary and romantic, the exact and free form, the structured and improvised.