Krzysztof Penderecki - Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

 
The most notorious war crime took place on August 6, 1945, when the first American atomic bomb wiped out Hiroshima killing immediately almost 100,000 people (most of them innocent civilians) and thousands more in the next years from radiation. What makes Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings even more monstrous is that even in a military sense they were needless, because Japan being in hopeless strategic position was about to surrender. Moreover "The Russians had secretly agreed (they were officially not at war with Japan) they would come into the war ninety days after the end of the European war."[1]  So the bombing which was later characterized by scientists like P. M. S. BlackeIt as "the first major operation of the cold diplomatic war with Russia.. .."[2] probably took place because the United States was anxious to drop the bomb before the Russians entered the war against Japan. Thus "the Japanese would surrender to the United States, not the Russians, and the United States would be the occupier of postwar Japan."[3]. Others like James F. Byrnes insisted that "the bomb was too expensive not to use, and dropping the bomb could make the Soviets better behaved in Eastern Europe"[4]. The Truman administration's official excuse of shortening the war and minimizing its casualties never sounded convincing. But whatever its reasons the drop of the atomic bombs was a crime against humanity, which marked the beginning of the Cold War and brought its consequences worldwide, being the first act of nuclear state terrorism.


Today, on the 69nth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, we post the famous "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" for 52 string instruments (24 violins, 10 violas, 10 cellos, 8 contrabasses). It is a significant musical work, composed in 1960 by Krzysztof Penderecki. It was granted an award by the UNESCO International Tribune of Composers in Paris, a medal in Japan and numerous performances around the world. The piece was originally titled 8'37'' and it was not composed for Hiroshima. The composer changed its title later, thus giving the composition an anti-war symbolism. It is an exploration of sound mass with tone clusters, tone colors, microtonality, extreme tessituras, and various bowing techniques.

Some notes about the work can be found in these web pages:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threnody_to_the_Victims_of_Hiroshima
http://culture.pl/en/work/threnody-to-the-victims-of-hiroshima-krzysztof-penderecki

More comments and analytical information can be found in the following web pages:
http://www.anthonybannach.com/uploads/2/1/6/7/21674290/pendereckipaper.pdf
http://monashcomposers.wordpress.com/2010/05/18/k-penderecki-threnody-for-the-victims-of-hiroshima/

A low resolution scanned version of the score is posted here

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1. Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 1492-Present
2. ibid.
3. ibid.
4. Andrew J. Rotter, Hiroshima: The World's Bomb