Arvo Pärt, (born Sept. 11, 1935, Paide, Est.), Estonian composer. After years of experimentation, he began in the late 1970s to produce his own distinctive music. A devoutly Orthodox Christian, he developed a style based on the slow modulation of sounds such as those produced by bells and pure voice tones, a technique reminiscent of the medieval Notre-Dame school and the sacred music of Eastern Orthodoxy. His major works include the violin concerto Tabula Rasa (1977), Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten (1977), Magnificat-Antiphones (1988), and The Beatitudes (1991).
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