Tikhon Khrennikov criticized Pärt in 1962 for employing serialism in "Nekrolog" (1960), the first 12-tone music written in Estonia, which exhibited his "susceptibility to foreign influences". But nine months later Pärt won First Prize in a competition of 1,200 works, awarded by the all-"Union Society of Composers", indicating the Soviet regime's inability to agree on what was permissible. His first overtly sacred piece, "Credo" (1968), was a turning point in his career and life; on a personal level he had reached a creative crisis that led him to renounce the techniques and means of expression used so far; on a social level the religious nature of this piece resulted in him being unofficially censured and his music disappearing from concert halls. For the next eight years he composed very little, focusing instead on study of medieval and Renaissance music to find his new musical language. In 1972 he converted from Lutheranism to Orthodox Christianity.