Janet Beat (born 1937) studied music at Birmingham University, where she con-tinued with post-graduate research into early Italian opera for which she received the G. D. Cunningham Award. She continued her research in Italy and on her return home she had some composition tuition from Alexander Goehr and encouragement from Luigi Dallapiccola.
One of the women pioneers in electronic music composition in the UK, she established the electronic music and recording studios for the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 1992 she was Visiting Composer at the Meistersinger-Konservatorium, Nürnberg (now the Hochschule für Musik Nürnberg/Augsburg). In 1996 she began to lecture for Glasgow University where she is now an Honorary Research Fellow.
Her music has been performed worldwide with important premieres in London, Scotland, Austria, Germany, Poland and Portugal and broadcast in the UK, the USA and Portugal where a whole programme was devoted to her electro-acoustic music in the Musica Hoje series. She has also been a featured composer at festivals in London, Australia and Germany. Many of her works have been heard at major music festivals: the Edinburgh International Festival, the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, MDR Musiksommer, Nürnberger Tage Neuer Musik, Santorini Music Festival, Musica Nova, Mayfest, Contempofest Australia, Music Alaska, Electric Music 3, the Chard Festival of Women in Music, WIM the Festival. Though the main part of her music was written for the concert hall, she has also composed for film and television.
