Louis Andriessen undoubtedly belongs to the most influential Dutch composers of his generation. He studied under Kees van Baaren en Luciano Berio and formed together with Peter Schat and Reinbert de Leeuw a composers collective who together composed the famous operia Reconstruction. As a member of de Notenkrakers (a Dutch political movement) he was rebelling against the established musical order and he became an advocate for progressive music. Andriessen's true breakthrough came with his large-scaled work De Staat (The Republic) from 1976. Here you can influences of Stravinsky, jazz and American minimalism in favour of his earlier neoclassicism and serialism. De Staat was soon followed by monumental works such as Mausoleum (1979), De Tijd (1981) en De Snelheid (1983) which all culminated in his magnum opus De Materie (1989). In this work, all of Andriessen's characteristic elements come together.

As a professor in composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, he is regarded as the founder of the so-called The Hague school, of which the musical elements can be described as loud, aggressive, and stripped of every neo-romantic sentiment, just like Andriessen's music.