The Animated Score for Penderecki’s “Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima,” the Horrifying Composition Featured in Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Cuarón’s Children of Men & Other Films

If you were watch­ing episode 8 of Twin Peaks on Sun­day night, you might still be recov­er­ing from an over­dose of uncut, pure David Lynch. We’re not here to sum­ma­rize the episode but instead to point to the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment to one of the most star­tling sequences in all of the director’s fil­mog­ra­phy: The slow track­ing aer­i­al shot into the heart of the first nuclear test mush­room cloud, right into the mid­dle of hell itself (see below).

Although Ange­lo Badala­men­ti is back on board as the show’s com­pos­er, Lynch chose to use for this scene the mod­ern clas­si­cal work by Krzysztof Pen­derec­ki, Thren­ody to the Vic­tims of Hiroshi­ma, one of the most har­row­ing works of the 20th cen­tu­ry.

The eight-and-a-half minute composition—-which you can lis­ten to while fol­low­ing the composer’s abstract score in the video above—-was writ­ten by the Pol­ish com­pos­er for 52 strings, noth­ing else. This accounts for the shrill, all tre­ble nature of the piece. The title and ded­i­ca­tion came lat­er, only after Pen­derec­ki had lis­tened to it being per­formed.

“I was struck by the emo­tion­al charge of the work,” Pen­derec­ki said, “I searched for asso­ci­a­tions and, in the end, I decid­ed to ded­i­cate it to the Hiroshi­ma vic­tims.”

The work went on to take third place at the Grze­gorz Fitel­berg Com­posers’ Com­pe­ti­tion in Katow­ice in 1960 and won the Tri­bune Inter­na­tionale des Com­pos­i­teurs UNESCO prize in 1961, two major awards that began Penderecki’s jour­ney to become one of Poland’s most respect­ed com­posers, sec­ond only to Hen­ryk Górec­ki.

This isn’t Lynch’s first use of Pen­derec­ki, hav­ing put an excerpt of 1970’s Kos­mogo­nia in Wild at Heart’s “lip­stick freak­out” scene, and six pieces in Inland Empire.

And it isn’t the first time Thren­ody to the Vic­tims of Hiroshi­ma, has been used in film. It was cho­sen by Alfon­so Cuarón for Chil­dren of Men, and by Wes Craven for The Peo­ple Under the Stairs, which coin­ci­den­tal­ly starred two actors from Twin Peaks.

Inter­est­ing­ly, Pen­derec­ki had scored films in the ‘60s, but they were work for hire jobs: a pleas­ant folk filled score for Woj­ciech Has’s The Saragos­sa Man­u­script and choral pas­tiche in a Renais­sance style for Alain Resnais’ Je t’aime, Je t’aime, along with some tele­vi­sion work. But he kept that music sep­a­rate from his seri­ous work as a con­cert com­pos­er, see­ing sound­track work as undignified—-this was long before Philip Glass was scor­ing films, when careers were more reg­i­ment­ed.

Because he refused to score William Friedkin’s The Exor­cist for that rea­son, the direc­tor chose instead to use five of Penderecki’s already exist­ing works for some of the film’s scari­est moments: the appear­ance of words on Regan’s body, Father Merrin’s vision of evil near the start of the film, and dur­ing the exor­cism itself. Peo­ple remem­ber Mike Oldfield’s “Tubu­lar Bells” for its futur­is­tic sound of occult appre­hen­sion, but it’s Pen­dereck­i’s work that accom­pa­nied all the scream­ing from the audi­ences.

Six years lat­er in 1979, Stan­ley Kubrick would use sev­en Pen­derec­ki works for The Shin­ing, under­lin­ing the state of mad­ness in that par­tic­u­lar­ly jar­ring film.

By the mid-1970s, the com­pos­er was turn­ing away from the dis­cor­dant tonal clus­ters of these ear­ly works and towards a more tra­di­tion­al and often beau­ti­ful style. But for a cer­tain gen­er­a­tion of film­mak­ers, Pen­derec­ki will be syn­ony­mous with hor­ror. Last Sun­day showed the piece still holds a grim, dev­as­tat­ing pow­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

The Scores That Elec­tron­ic Music Pio­neer Wendy Car­los Com­posed for Stan­ley Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing
Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.