Composer’s vast archive destroyed in LA fires

About 100,000 works of 20th-century Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg have been destroyed in Los Angeles.

The sheet music was kept at his family’s music production company – which burned down in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood last week.

Although none of the original manuscripts were lost, Belmont Music Publishing’s music was loaned to singers and musicians.

The conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, said that these were “very important things” in music.

Schoenberg’s son, Larry, 83, said the music was stored in a shed in his backyard. Both buildings were gutted by fire last week.

Other memorabilia of Schoenberg was also destroyed, including photographs, letters and posters.

“For a company so focused on Schoenberg’s work, this loss is not only a material loss but a great cultural loss,” Larry said in a statement.

He said the collection was “essential” to musicians who depended on “well-chosen copies” of his father’s back catalogue.

Arnold Schoenberg was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1874. He achieved great success as a composer in Berlin before fleeing to the US in 1933 to escape persecution by the Nazis.

He later settled in Los Angeles where he continued his unconventional music. He was known for his versatility and his 12-ton approach that deviated from the conventional approach. He died in 1951 at the age of 76 in Los Angeles.

In a statement Belmont said it hopes to make digital copies of the winnings.

“We hope that soon we will be able to ‘rise from the ashes’ in digital form,” he said.

Many of Schoenberg’s original manuscripts are kept in a museum in Vienna, Austria.

Firefighters are still fighting to contain the wildfires in Los Angeles that started in early January. So far they have killed at least 24 people, destroyed thousands of homes and forced thousands of people to flee their homes.

The largest fire in Los Angeles that has burned more than 24,000 acres has burned the largest fire in the Palisades.