As pictorial as a tone poem, this documents one of the most horrifying moments in world history. ... Terror. Screams.
Michael Steinberg on Krzysztof Penderecki's composition Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima (For the Love of Music, Oxford U. Press, 2006, p.174)
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Here is the well-known story about this composition's title: Penderecki's original title was "8:37". However, this being Communist Poland of 1960, Penderecki was advised by some music bureaucrat (either from the Polish Radio or from the state owned music publishing house) to change the title so as to put an ideologically more advantageous face on this extremely dissonant modernist composition. Which he did. The rest, as they say, is history.
