Over 100,000 Arnold Schoenberg scores destroyed by LA fires in ‘profound cultural blow’

15 January 2025, 11:54

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.

Read more: LA Philharmonic forced to cancel concerts due to wildfires

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.”

Arnold Schoenberg: Verklärte Nacht

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.”