Serial Organization in Krzysztof Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima

Abstract

Krzysztof Penderecki and his renowned Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima (1960) are typi cally associated with sound mass or sonorism. However, Penderecki's sonoristic approach does not necessarily exclude other post-war compositional techniques—Scott Murphy, Wolfram Schwinger, Nelson Mandrell, and Mariusz Kozak have all identified serial tech niques in Penderecki's music in general or in Threnody specifically. As the locus classicus of sound mass compositions, these studies of serialism in Threnody deconstruct rhetorized polarities of twentieth-century musical aesthetics and composition. Neither sound mass nor serial analyses of Threnody, however, have accounted for the role of serial procedures in organizing textural elements. In this analytical vignette, I analyze the organization of extended techniques in mm. 6–9 of Penderecki's Threnody using serial approaches, which yields two benefits. First, it reveals an isography between the or ganization in each measure and the overall organization across all four measures. Second, it encourages the use of similarity measures to consider the compositional goal of this organization. Ultimately, I argue that, much like serialized pitch can be used to obfuscate a tonal center, Penderecki's organization of extended techniques creates a mass of sound without a perceivable pattern—a composed-out alteatoricism.