The piece contains two movements, "Ludus" and "Silentium," and is a double concerto for two solo violins, prepared piano, and chamber orchestra.

Pärt emerged from this period of innovation in 1976, and composed many of his most well known works, including Fratres, Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, and Summa, all written in the tintinnabuli style.

Tabula Rasa is one of these earliest tintinnabuli pieces, and holds the distinction of being one of the first compositions of Pärt's to reach Western listeners outside of Estonia and the Soviet States.

Tabula Rasa was composed at the request of Eri Klas, a friend and conductor, who asked Pärt to write a piece to accompany Alfred Schnittke’s Concerto Grosso No.

In 1984, ECM Records, under the direction of Manfred Eicher, released their first recording of Pärt's music, entitled "Tabula Rasa", which featured performers Gidon Kremer, Tatjana Grindenko, Keith Jarrett, Alfred Schnittke, with the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Saulius Sondeckis.

Tasmin Little is the soloist with Martin Roscoe (piano) and the Bournemouth Sinfonietta conducted by Richard Studt who also plays the second violin.

The movement contains alternating moments of silence and expanding canon variations, a cadenza, and a final meno mosso.

After the chamber orchestra finishes, one of the solo violins and the prepared piano play together, followed by a grand pause of seven beats.

Each pair, divided into melodic and tintinnabuli voices, begin on a central pitch, and move at a different rhythmic speeds.

The solo violins, moving at the slowest rhythmic speed, reach their octave span in measure 130, and then begin a downward descent of a D minor four-octave scale.

Pärt omits the final “D” of the scale, leaving the listener with four written bars of silence in which to resolve the piece.

The simplicity and minimal design of the packaging set the tone for all subsequent releases of Pärt's music with ECM.

In an article in The New Yorker in December 2002, music critic Alex Ross discussed the use of Tabula Rasa in palliative care for AIDS and cancer patients facing the end of their disease.