Born in Sankt Pölten, Walter Graf was educated at the University of Vienna where he earned his doctorate in 1933 with a dissertation on German influences on Estonian folksong.
[1] From 1957 to 1963 Graf was the head of the records archive at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.
He was elected member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1962, and served as chairman of its 1972 research commission on sound.
[1] While working for the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Graf was also active as a director and vice president of the Gesellschaft zur Herausgabe der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (1957–1974).
[1][2] Graf published several work in comparative musicology based in an anthropological conception of music.