John Tyrrell was born in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) in 1942 and studied at the universities of Cape Town, Oxford and Brno. After working as an editor at The Musical Times and on the sixth edition of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, he joined University of Nottingham as Lecturer in Music (1976), becoming Reader in Opera Studies (1987) and Professor (1996). He was awarded a two-year British Academy Research Fellowship in 1992. From 1996 to 2000 he was Executive Editor of the seventh edition (2001) of Grove's Dictionary. In 2000 he was appointed Professorial Research Professor at Cardiff University. In 2002 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Masaryk University of Brno for his work on Janáček and Czech music and in 2003 a Charles Flint Kellogg Award in Arts and Letters (New York).

John Tyrrell's work has been concerned with Czech music, in particular that of Leoš Janáček. The first volume of his biography of Janáček appeared in 2006; the second and final volume is due to appear in November 2007. In addition to the books listed in the links he wrote the notes for the celebrated Mackerras series of Janáček operas which from the late 1970s greatly contributed to the growing interest in the composer. With Sir Charles Mackerras he published the ' Brno 1908' version of Janáček's opera Jenůfa that restored the composer's original intentions and which has been extensively performed throughout the world.

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John Tyrrell