Though originally conceived as an abstract sonic canvas, Penderecki's Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) for fifty-two string players not only dramatically demonstrated the capacity of conventional string instruments to transcend their traditional role but, with a new title appended, to paint a picture of atomic devastation. In this ingenious rethinking of a familiar sonic resource, the composer encouraged his audience to hear his composition as an evocation of the psychological nightmare of the first nuclear holocaust. It is a gripping piece that has become a postwar modern classic, redolent more of a composition for electronic tape than one by Tartini or other early composers noted for their string writing. The unusual notation of the score, which forgoes traditional noteheads in favor of thin black bars that expand and contract on a typical five-line staff like an aneurysm, is a direct mirror and measure of the work's conception.

One of our neighbors, Michiko Waits, was in Hiroshima the day of the bombing. Her impressions of that cataclysmic event are attached.  see "A Survivor's Story"