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Born in Launceston, Tasmania, in 1929, Sculthorpe was educated at Launceston Church Grammar School, the University of Melbourne and Wadham College, Oxford. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, where he began teaching in 1963. He has also taught at music institutions and universities both within and outside Australia, and he holds honorary doctorates from Tasmania, Melbourne, Sussex, Griffith and Sydney. In 1977 he was appointed OBE and in that year he was the recipient of a Silver Jubilee Medal. He was appointed AO in 1990.

Sculthorpe's catalogue consists of more than three hundred and fifty works and, apart from juvenilia, a good part of it is regularly performed and recorded throughout the world. The composer has written in most musical forms and almost all his works are influenced by the social climate and physical characteristics of Australia. Furthermore, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island music, and the gamelan music of Indonesia, have been significant influences upon his musical language.

Sculthorpe has a deep love for his country and for its landscape, which he regards as sacred. Because of this, one of the most constant themes in his output is the protection of Australia's environment, as well as that of the whole planet. His preoccupation with the frailty of the human condition can be found in works such as the choral Requiem (2004) and String Quartet No.16 (2006). The former grew from his concern about women and children being killed in the war in Iraq, the latter from the plight of people in detention.

The recipient of many awards, Sculthorpe regards the most important as being chosen as one of Australia's 100 Living National Treasures (National Trust of Australia, 1997), Distinguished Artist 2001 (International Society for the Performing Arts), Honorary Foreign Life Member (American Academy of Arts and Letters, 2003) and one of the 100 Most Influential Australians (The Bulletin magazine, 2006).

Sculthorpe's work is discussed in books by Michael Hannan, Peter Sculthorpe: His Music and Ideas 1929–1979, St. Lucia, 1982, Deborah Hayes, Peter Sculthorpe: A Bio–Bibliography, Connecticut, 1993, and the composer himself, in his autobiography, Sun Music, Sydney, 1999. The first volume of Graeme Skinner's biography, Peter Sculthorpe : the making of an Australian composer, was published in 2007.

Biography provided by the composer — current to March 2008