 He studied music with Edgard de Laet, Flor Peeters, and Marinus De Jong at the Lemmens Institute in Mechelen, and musicology and philosophy at the Catholic University of Leuven from 1953 to 1957.From 1960 to 1964 he participated annually in the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, where he came into contact with Pierre Boulez, Bruno Maderna, Luciano Berio, György Ligeti, and Mauricio Kagel, amongst others (; ).In addition, he attended the Second and Third Cologne Courses for New Music organized by Karlheinz Stockhausen, in 1964–65 and 1965–66 where, in addition to Stockhausen, he had the opportunity of meeting the composers Henri Pousseur and Luciano Berio, as well as the conductor Michael Gielen .