Louis Andriessen is the son of the composer and organist Hendrik Andriessen (b. 1892 – d. 1981), nephew of the composer and pianist Willem Andriessen (b. 1887 – d. 1964) and brother of the composer Jurriaan Andriessen (b. 1925 – d. 1996). He studied composition privately with his father from 1953–57 and with Kees van Baaren at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag from 1957–62, where he graduated with a first prize. He then studied composition privately with Luciano Berio in Milan and Berlin from 1962–64 and assisted him with the scoring of Passaggio. His honors include the selected work at the UNESCO International Rostrum of Composers in Paris (1977, for De Staat), the Matthijs Vermeulen Prijs (1977, for De Staat; 1992, for De Materie), the 3M Music Award (1993), and the Edison Award (1993, for the Nonesuch recording of De Tijd). Retrospectives of his music have been given recently in London (2002) and New York City (2004). He is also active in other positions. He founded the wind ensemble Orkest de Volharding in Amsterdam in 1972, with which he remains associated, and later founded the amplified ensemble Hoketus in Amsterdam in 1976, which disbanded in 1986. He has written numerous articles, most of which appear in The Art of Stealing Time (2003, edited by Mirjam Zegers, translated by Clare Yates), and co-wrote with Elmer Schönberger the book Het Apollinisch Uurwerk (1982, translated by Jeff Hamburg as The Apollonian Clockwork, Oxford University Press), a study of Igor Stravinsky. He is furthermore the subject of the book The Music of Louis Andriessen by Maja Trochimczyk (2002, Routledge) and an examination of De Staat by Robert Adlington appeared in the Landmarks in Music since 1950 series (2004, Ashgate Publishing). In addition, he served as artistic director of the Meltdown Festival in London in 1994 and now directs the annual International Young Composers Meeting in Apeldoorn. He taught instrumentation at the Royal Conservatory in Den Haag from 1974–78 and has taught composition there since 1978. He has also given guest lectures in numerous countries, including a semester at Yale University in 1987. Boosey & Hawkes and Donemus publish most of his music.