A statement from the Ernst von Siemens Foundation saluted Ferneyhough, a student of Lennox Berkeley, Ton de Leeuw and Klaus Huber, as having "rethought and illuminated the myriad possibilities of manipulating musical material and stretched these possibilities to their limits ... he has greatly expanded the potential range of instrumental performance and musical notation. His string quartets, almost all of them premired by the Arditti Quartet, are among the most difficult in the genre."
Daniel Barenboim was awarded the prize in 2006; the 2005 winner was composer Henri Dutilleux.
