Louis Andriessen was born in Utrecht on June 6, 1939. After an early training in composition with his father, composer Hendrik Andriessen, he continued his studies with Kees van Baaren at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague. Receiving the major composition prize upon his graduation, Andriessen subsequently studied two years with Luciano Berio in Milan (1962-63) and Berlin (1964-65).

Returning to Holland Andriessen established himself as a leading musical figure through his compositions and as a performer of his own and others' work. Since 1978 he has held a teaching appointment in composition at the Royal Conservatory. He has also been a teacher at the Californian Institute of Arts (Los Angeles), Princeton University and the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen. In 1987, he lectured on musical theory and composition in the U.S. at Yale University. In 1991 he began his first collaboration with British film director Peter Greenaway (The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover, Prospero’s Books) in the video film, M is for Man, Music, Mozart, commissioned by BBC TV for the composer's bicentenary. In 1994 Andriessen was the artistic director of the Meltdown Festival at the South Bank Centre in London. In 2004, he is appointed professor at the Art Faculty of the University of Leiden.

Andriessen’s early works are serial (compositions that uses a definite order of notes as a thematic basis), but by 1963 he was working with graphic notation (the representation of musical sounds in the form of small pictures and symbols), using a combination of fixed and non-fixed elements to facilitate improvisation. In 1970, he decided to stop writing music for standard symphonic ensembles for good. For a time, he worked in electronic music before his major creative breakthrough in 1976, De Staat. The piece was a large choral work based on Plato's Republic sung in the original Greek, combining Ancient Greek scales, Stravinskyian rhythms, repetition, and hocket (a rhythmic device which enlivens rhythm by putting rests in the middle of vocal lines). Andriessen’s musical palette for De Staat consisted of four women's voices, four oboes, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, two electric guitars, a bass guitar, two pianos, two harps, and four violas. It earned the composer the coveted Kees van Baaren Prize, and since then he has garnered numerous awards, citations and commissions.

Andriessen often uses "rock" instruments, such as electric guitar, bass, and synthesizer to augment his ensembles. His popularity with young listeners and presence on both the contemporary and classical music scenes has provided an unprecedented boost to the prominence of contemporary Dutch music throughout the world.

For more infomation on Louis Andriessen, please refer to the following:

www.muziekgroep.nl

http://www.boosey.com

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