Dedicated to the residents of Hiroshima killed and injured by the first-ever wartime usage of an atomic weapon, the composition won the Tribune Internationale des Compositeurs UNESCO prize that same year.

[16] Threnody's sustained tone clusters and various extended techniques – including a riot of varying vibrato, slapped instruments, playing on the tailpiece and behind the bridge – are matched by an optical notation full of thick black lines.

[17][18]: 94  At times Penderecki takes an aleatoric approach, offering the players a choice of techniques or demanding irregular degrees of vibrato.

[18]: 93 Excerpts from Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima have been used in Alfonso Cuarón's 2006 film Children of Men,[19][20] Wes Craven's 1991 social thriller The People Under the Stairs,[21][22] the third season of David Lynch and Mark Frost's TV series Twin Peaks,[23][24] and Gerry Anderson's 1969 film Journey to the Far Side of the Sun.

[25] In music, excerpts from Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima are sampled in one version of Manic Street Preachers's 1991 song You Love Us[26] and in SebastiAn's 2010 release Bird Games.