Ernst Krenek was born in Vienna and became a pupil of Franz Schreker at the Vienna Music Academy, following his teacher in 1920 to the Berlin Musikhochschule, where his musical style began to develop in other directions. His compositions of the 1920s won him a reputation as an enfant terrible, bringing international success with his jazz opera Jonny spielt auf, and in the 1930s a change to serial composition, notably in the opera Karl V, withdrawn through political intrigue from a planned staging in Vienna in 1934. His opposition to National Socialism and the Anschluss led him to emigrate in 1938 to America, where he enjoyed a career of distinction as a teacher and as a prolific composer, exploring the possibilities of serialism and other contemporary techniques of composition.