The Estonian composer, best known for his folk-inflected choral works, has died at 86 of long-term illnesses.

The Estonian composer Veljo Tormis has died at the age of 86. Best known for his folk-inflected choral works, he is considered one of the most important Estonian composers of the 20th century.

Born in Kuusalu, Estonia, in 1930, Tormis began his music studies at the Tallinn Music School in 1942 before his education was interrupted by the Second World War and illness. He studied with organ with Edgar Arro at the Tallin Conservatory, but switched to composition with Villem Kapp when Soviet authorities cancelled the organ class on ideological grounds. Tormis went on to study at the Moscow Conservatory where his teachers included Vissarion Shebalin – a friend of Shostakovich – and Yury Fortunatov.

Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, Tormis taught at music schools and from 1955–74 was a consultant at the Estonian Union of Composers. By the late ’60s he was a celebrated composer and was able to support himself through the purchase of his manuscripts by the Ministry of Culture and through composition prizes. His works were performed throughout the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – though during the late ’70s and ’80s his overtly anti-Soviet works were not performed in public.

Tormis’ work – which includes more than 500 choral songs (not to mention 35 film scores and an opera) – is considered an extension of the strong Estonian choral tradition and his use of traditional Estonian songs and folk music was integral to his style. The composer famously said, “It is not I who makes use of folk music, it is folk music that makes use of me.” The folk elements of his music initially helped Tormis’ work escape censorship, but later became associated with Estonia’s drive for independence in the 1980s.

The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 brought Tormis’ music to a wider international audience. His 1972 work Raua Needmine (Curse Upon Iron), for mixed chorus and shaman drum, has since become the composer’s most performed work outside Estonia.

In 2010 Tormis was awarded the Order of the National Coat of Arms, First Class by Estonian president Toomas Hendrik IIves, and he ranks alongside Arvo Pärt as one of the giants of Estonian composition.

Get Limelight's free weekly round-up of music, arts and culture.