8 minutes 37 seconds

8'37" - that was a working title of a musical piece composed by K. Penderecki in 1960. 

The title of the piece was not innovative. Eight years earlier, John Cage "composed" a piece called 4'33'' (4 minutes 33 seconds). I wrote the word composed in quotation marks because this piece is absolute silence.

So this is a musical version of the fairy tale The King's New Clothes. However, so far no one has cried during the performance of the song - the king is naked!
Perhaps music soothes manners.

You can watch it HERE.

Krzysztof Penderecki had great appreciation for John Cage and probably agreed with his statement: music is pointless fun, an affirmation of life. It is not an attempt to bring order to chaos or to repair creation. It is simply a way of awakening to the life we live.

In practice, this meant musical experiments, including sonorism - a musical direction invented by Polish composers, in which sound is the essence. There is no rhythm, no melody, only sound, like colourful spots on an abstract painting. 

The piece 8'37'' was supposed to be just such an experiment. Krzysztof Penderecki composed it in a laboratory, on electronic equipment.
Fortunately, in those days (Communist Poland), creative activity was not limited by finances, so Penderecki had the opportunity to listen to his work performed by a symphony orchestra - 52 string instruments.

He listened and was shocked.
He changed the title of the song to Threnody in memory of the victims of Hiroshima.

My Sunday Reflection:
I found Penderecki's experience quite significant. I thought maybe that's what's happening in the universe.
God is experimenting in his heavenly laboratory, and on Earth, an orchestra of over 7 billion artists performs this piece.

The effect is truly shocking.

Let's go back to K. Penderecki.
Threnody in memory of the victims of Hiroshima was first performed in 1960 and marked the beginning of the composer's brilliant career.

I listened to this piece in 1962.
It was my first encounter with avant-garde music and on the one hand it was a shock - is this music?
On the other hand, it touched familiar strings - the bomb alarm, the patter of feet heading for the shelter, the distant sound of an approaching plane. I vaguely remembered the nights spent in the shelter during last months of WWII, I vividly remembered my mother's stories about the bombings.

Why did I choose this topic for Sunday?
Today - August 6 - is the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima - CLICK.

One more thing...
I mentioned that in sonoric music there is no rhythm, no melody. Music notation resembles technical charts.

That's why I'm including the Threnody animation here.
For me, it is not so much associated with the atomic bomb, but with the attack of viruses.
Listen and Watch - CLICK.