Luc Van Hove (°1957) studied at the Royal Flemish Music Conservatory in Antwerp. He received instruction in composition from Willem Kersters. After his studies he sought artistic refreshment through the intense study of the work of Bartók, Lutosławski and Ligeti.

With Bartók, Van Hove shares a thoroughgoing organic writing style: movements and sometimes whole works are resolutely constructed out of the constant variation and thematic reworking of a limited number of tones, the 'pitch collection'. Van Hove's Quintet for woodwinds opus 10 with its short, introductory first movement and its long and substantial second movement recalls Lutosławski. The use of hammered clusters and the importance of (poly)rhythmic conflicts in turn recall Ligeti's influence. In his later works, Van Hove not only uses tonal material in an atonal way, the opposite is also true. The confrontation of the tonal and the atonal remains a constant in the (orchestral) oeuvre of Van Hove's work.