Arvo Pärt (born 1935) is an Estonian composer living in Berlin. From 1957 to 1963, he studied at the Tallinn conservatory, where he took composition lessons from Heino Eller. His compositions from that period show influences of Bartók, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, as well as Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. After his studies, he worked in radio and experimented with various composition techniques. A spiritual and professional crisis led him to study early music, from Gregorian chant and early polyphony to Renaissance polyphony. He joined the Russian Orthodox Church. Pärt withdrew in the late 1960s, only to make himself heard again almost a decade later; the great transformation his music had undergone by then makes his early and later works seem to have been written by two completely different composers. Pärt coined the term 'tintinnabular' for the music of his later period, from the Latin tintinnabulum ('bell'), since it sounds like the sound of bells. This music is characterised by simple harmonies, few notes and slow movements. The first work to use this technique was the piano work Für Alina (1976). This was followed by Fratres, Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten and Tabula Rasa, all three from 1977, which are still his best-known works. In 1980, Pärt emigrated to Vienna, and then to West Berlin. Since then, he has written mostly religious works, often commissioned by choirs and cathedrals. Pärt was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1996. In 2003 he received the Contemporary Music Award at the Classical Brit Awards at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and in 2008 he received the Danish Léonie Sonning Prize.