Walter Werzowa is professor of media composition with a focus on film music at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.
Werzowa, who was born in Vienna in 1960 and mentored by figures including Otto M. Zykan, left Austria after having achieved gold and platinum status with the song “Bring me Edelweiss”. He completed his postgraduate studies in film composition under Jerry Goldsmith, David Raksin, Bruce Broughton, and Buddy Baker at the University of Southern California and had already been hired by the Walt Disney Studios Trailer Department by the time he graduated. Shortly thereafter, Werzowa founded the music label Musikvergnuegen.
Following some initial major international successes, namely the audio logo for Intel and the theme song for Arnold Schwarzenegger’s film Eraser, he expanded his company. Werzowa dove into what became a prolific film industry career, composing film music for directors including Steven Spielberg and Wim Wenders, and 2007 saw him compile a music library with over 26,000 tracks that was eventually purchased by the music company BMG in 2014. After experiencing his son’s recovery from a serious illness, a recovery process in which sound and music provided significant support, Werzowa founded HealthTunes, a non-profit organisation concerned with the evidence-based study of music’s effects on health.
He went on to earn a master’s degree at the University of Santa Monica in 2016 and subsequently founded The MusicMedicine Consultancy GmbH, which is specialised in music-supported healing. After 30 years spent living in Los Angeles, Walter Werzowa returned to Vienna and opened up a studio in connection with Musikvergnuegen LA.
He recently finalised the project Beethoven X (involving cooperation between the universities Harvard, Rutgers, and Cornell), which features interplay between artificial intelligence and excerpts from Beethoven’s 10th Symphony. Werzowa is music director of the immersive project Mythos Mozart, which opened in Vienna in September of 2022, and he is also in demand internationally as a speaker at symposia and conferences.