He received his BA in mathematics at New York University in 1965, where he also received the highest honors in music, which he studied with Lejaren Hiller, Henri Pousseur, Allen Sapp, and Leo Smit. He received his MA in composition in 1970 and his PhD in theory in 1972 at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Arnold Rosner has earned numerous awards and grants from ASCAP, Meet the Composer and other organizations and is the subject of a doctoral thesis by Paul Vanderwerf at Northwestern University.