Posted on 01/15/2025 2:04:35 PM PST by nickcarraway
Scores, letters and photographs held by Arnold Schoenberg’s publisher have been lost to the wildfires blazing across Los Angeles.
More than 100,000 scores by the 20th century composer Arnold Schoenberg have been destroyed in the LA wildfires, in what his son Larry Schoenberg has described as “a profound cultural blow.”
Larry Schoenberg ran Belmont Music Publishers and kept an archive of his father’s music and memorabilia in an outbuilding behind his Pacific Palisades home. Both buildings have fallen victim to the largest of several wildfires that have wreaked devastating destruction to the Los Angeles area in recent weeks.
“It’s brutal. We lost everything,” Larry Schoenberg told the New York Times.
The composer’s son, now 83 years old, stored over 100,000 of his father’s scores at Belmont, in addition to photographs, letters, books, posters and more. The scores were held in a digital back-up, but this was also destroyed in the fire.
Self-taught, and inspired by the likes of Wagner and Brahms, Schoenberg’s early works built on the lush, Romantic era style, before he began to develop the twelve-tone serialist technique that would define his legacy and cement him as one of the leading figures of 20th century classical music.
“There’s a finality here which is astonishing,” Larry Schoenberg said. “There’s no hope left that you’re going to find or retrieve anything. And that’s a different kind of grief.”
He added in a later statement: “For a company that focused exclusively on the works of Schoenberg, this loss represents not just a physical destruction of property but a profound cultural blow.”
The one mild respite amid the devastation is that no original scores were lost in the blaze. Most of these are held by a museum in Vienna, Schoenberg’s birthplace.
However, Belmont’s destruction means the loss of a vast library of performance scores, respected and valued by musicians worldwide for its close connection to the composer himself. Some have warned that the loss could lead to a pause in performances of Schoenberg’s work, as performers struggle to source alternative scores.
Belmont is ultimately hoping to recover its inventory, stating on its website: “We hope that in the near future we will be able to ‘rise from the ashes’ in a completely digital form.”
Larry Schoenberg commented that he would follow his father’s example as he comes to terms with the scale of his loss: “Whenever there was a difficulty, [Arnold Schoenberg] would express his frustration, then get to work on a solution. Despite all that has happened, we are trying to be very positive. There are no tears here.”
First comment from your link:
The wonderful thing about playing Schoenberg is that if you make a mistake and play the wrong note no one can tell the difference anyway.
Some of those scores should be in the archived works of our major orchestras.
Yeah, implement the “3-2-1” back-up strategy (one offsite back-up):
https://www.acronis.com/en-us/blog/posts/backup-rule/
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/the-3-2-1-backup-strategy/
The people of California had a choice: Save the works of Arnold Schoenberg or the tiny endangered delta smelt.
If they would have thought like President Trump, They wouldn’t be crying for the loss of Arnold Schoenberg masterpieces or considering the recall of “Newscum” for their stupidity in falling for such a incompetent buffoon.
“Governor Gavin Newscum refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snow melt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way”
“Now the ultimate price is being paid. I will demand that this incompetent governor allow beautiful, clean, fresh water to FLOW INTO CALIFORNIA! He is the blame for this. On top of it all, no water for fire hydrants, no firefighting planes. A true disaster!”—President Trump
The scores and pictures were probably replaced when they knew the building was going up in flames, They will make their way back into collector’s hands eventually. This kind of thing sets the art world prices of rarities on fire... things known or suspected to be destroyed.
Right. How about the Hunter crayon collection destroyed worth millions of Zimbabwe dollars?
It would not surprise me if it was used as background music to torture prisoners.
Lol.
I’m going to have to look it up. I was never really a fan of his, but I’ll give it a try. It’s too bad when things like that happen, it’s a great loss. Publishers should start making digital copies and storing them in vaults.
*****
I agree. One of my music professors had an electronic keyboard/organ made by Motorola that was able to play quarter tones, thereby greatly extending the number of tones in one octave. I never could understand why. “Atonal” is as far as I go…
Should have been stored in a collection at some university.
The fire was started by someone burning one of Hunter’s paintings.
How do you not have multiple different, digital backups, at least two or three of which are in different and utterly safe locations? It’s one thing for a building to burn down with a bunch of a rich house, but at this place in history, there is unfortunately no excuse for having one digital copy in the same location as all of the originals.
“rich house” = originals. Siri is a moron.
LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!.....
After he died his widow found a note in his desk, written some years earlier, about the American composer Charles Ives:
“There is a great Man living in this Country – a composer. He has solved the problem how to preserve one’s self-esteem and to learn. He responds to negligence by contempt. He is not forced to accept praise or blame. His name is Ives.”
I hope that note somehow survived.
His romantic style pieces are lush. Friede auf Erden comes to mind.
I guess that’s what “the cloud” is for. And a safe deposit box at a bank.
Larry’s son and Arnold’s grandson, Randol Shoenberg, was the lawyer in the “Lady in Gold” case, later made into a movie with Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. Maria Altmann, who got the painting back from the Austrian government, was smart enough to sell it to Ronald Lauder for his NYC museum for $135 million.
oh, my, I’m so sorry! I didn’t realize that you were referencing this same piece! I didn’t mean my post as a corrective, but, rather, as an additive! lol, I didn’t know the piece by the name you used, but I did know it as a (beautiful) piece! So that was my intent: to mention another beautiful piece but as it turns out it was the same one!
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