No less than 100,000 scores by the pioneering twentieth century Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg have been destroyed within the Los Angeles wildfires.
The sheet music was stored at his household’s music manufacturing firm – which burnt down within the Pacific Palisades neighbourhood final week.
Whereas no unique manuscripts have been misplaced, the music owned by Belmont Music Publishing had been the primary assortment of scores rented out to orchestras and musicians.
The director of the American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, mentioned these had been an “indispensable useful resource” for performing musicians.
Schoenberg’s son, Larry, 83, mentioned the sheet music had been stored in a constructing behind his home. Each buildings have been razed within the fires final week.
Different Schoenberg memorabilia was additionally destroyed, together with images, letters and posters.
“For an organization that targeted completely on the works of Schoenberg, this loss represents not only a bodily destruction of property however a profound cultural blow,” mentioned Larry in an announcement.
He described the gathering as “important” for musicians who depend on the “meticulously curated editions” of his father’s again catalogue.
Arnold Schoenberg was born right into a Jewish household in Vienna in 1874. He went on to search out large success as a composer in Berlin earlier than fleeing to the US in 1933 to keep away from persecution from the Nazis.
He ultimately settled in Los Angeles the place he continued his groundbreaking compositions. He was recognized for atonality and his 12-tones approach which departed from standard harmonies. He died in 1951 on the age of 76 in Los Angeles.
In an announcement Belmont mentioned it hoped to create digital copies of the scores.
“We hope that within the close to future we can ‘rise from the ashes’ in a totally digital kind,” the assertion mentioned.
Most of Schoenberg’s unique manuscripts are held at a museum in Vienna, Austria.
Firefighters are nonetheless battling to manage the large wildfires in Los Angeles which started in early January. To this point they’ve killed not less than 24 folks, destroyed hundreds of buildings and compelled tens of hundreds of individuals to flee their houses.
Two main blazes are nonetheless raging in Los Angeles together with the biggest hearth on the Palisades which has burned by means of greater than 24,000 acres.
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, 2025-01-14 17:36:00
