Robert Starer was born in Vienna in 1924 and received his musical education at the State Academy in Vienna, the Jerusalem Conservatoire and the Juilliard School. He became an American citizen in 1957. He has taught at Juilliard and at the Graduate Center of C.U.N.Y. where he was named a Distinguished Professor in 1986. Among his honors are two Guggenheim Fellowships. He was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1994, awarded the Medal of Honor for Science and Art by the President of Austria in 1995, an Honorary Doctorate by the State University of New York in 1996 and a Presidential Citation by the National Federation of Music Clubs in 1997.

His stage works include three operas and several ballets for Martha Graham. His orchestral works have been performed by major orchestras here and abroad under such conductors as Mitropoulos, Bernstein, Steinberg, and Mehta. Interpreters of his music include Janos Starker, Jaime Laredo, Paula Robison and Leontyne Price. The recording of his Violin Concerto (Itzhak Perlman with the Boston Symphony under Seiji Ozawa) was nominated for a Grammy. Excerpts from his book Continuo: A Life in Music have appeared in the New Yorker, Musical America, and the London Times. In 1997 the Overlook Press published The Music Teacher, his first work of fiction. The opening chapter was excerpted in The Keyboard Companion. CD recordings of his music are available from CRI, VOX, Albany Records, Transcontinental and MMC.