Hendrik Hofmeyr was born in Cape Town in 1957. His first major success as a composer came in 1988 with 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' which won the South African Opera Competition and the Nederburg Opera Prize. In the same year, Hofmeyr, who was furthering his studies in Italy during ten years of self-imposed political exile, obtained first prize in an international competition in Trent with music for a Wim Wenders film. In 1992 he accepted a post as lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch, and in 1997 won two further international competitions, the Queen Elisabeth Competition of Belgium (with 'Raptus' for violin and orchestra) and the Dimitri Mitropoulos Competition in Athens (with 'Byzantium' for high voice and orchestra). He joined UCT in 1998. His Second Symphony - 'The Elements' received a UCT Creative Works Award in 2018, and in 2021 a CD of his works, 'Partita africana', was chosen as CD of the Month by the French magazine Classica.
