He was innate within Vienna. He exposed there & within Berlin with Franz Schreker before working in the total of German opera when conductor. In the period of World War I, Krenek was drafted into the Austrian Army, however he was stationed within Vienna, permitting him to last in by having his musical studies. Inside 1922 he met Gustav Mahler's daughter, Anna, & her mother, Alma, who asked Krenek to complete her late married man's Symphony No. 10. Krenek helped edit a foremost & third movements however went there is no farther. Within 1924 he married Anna, sole to divorce her prior to a foremost day of remembrance.

His music was banned inside Germany per Nazi Party and repressed in Austria. He moved to the United States of America in 1938 where he taught music, including at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota from 1942-1947. He became an Western citizen inside 1945. His students involved George Perle and Robert Erickson. He died within Palm Springs, California.

Krenek's music is inside the kind of styles. His early function is around the late-Romantic idiom, showing the influence of his teacher Schreker (de.). He late embraced atonality, but the visit to Paris, where he became acquainted with a act of Igor Stravinsky and Les Six led him to adopt neo-classical style. His opera Jonny spielt auf (Johnny Strikes Up, 1926), which is influenced by jazz, was a great success inside his lifespan, swimming completely across Europe. Around spite of Nazi protests, it became and so popular that possibly the brand of butt, however on the market now within Austria, was known as "Johnny". He so began writing within the neo-Romantic style by owning Franz Schubert as a model, with his Reisebuch aus den österreichischen Alpen when prime case, prior to applying Arnold Schoenberg's twelve tone technique; the opera Karl V (1938) is completely written around this style, when come virtually all of his late pieces. He likewise experimented by having electronic and aleatoric music.

Krenek wrote the total of books, including Music On text & Okay, (1939) the survey of Johannes Ockeghem (1953) and Horizons Circled: Reflections in our Music (1974).