Veljo Tormis

Veljo Tormis (7 August 1930 – 21 January 2017) was an Estonian composer, regarded as one of the great contemporary choral composers and one of the most important composers of the 20th century in Estonia. Internationally, his fame arises chiefly from his extensive body of choral music, which exceeds 500 individual choral songs, most of it a cappella. The great majority of these pieces are based on traditional ancient Estonian folksongs (regilaulud), either textually, melodically, or merely stylistically. His composition most often performed outside Estonia, Curse Upon Iron (Raua needmine, 1972), invokes ancient Shamanistic traditions to construct an allegory about the evils of war.