At least 100,000 scores of 20th-century Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg were destroyed in the Los Angeles fire.
The sheet music was stored in his family’s music production company – which burned down in the Pacific Palisades area last week.
Although no original manuscripts have been lost, the music held by Belmont Music Publishing was once the primary collection of scores for hire by orchestras and musicians.
The director of the American Symphony Orchestra, Leon Botstein, said that these were an “important” resource for the musicians.
Schoenberg’s son, Larry, 83, said the sheet music was stored in a building behind his house. Both buildings were destroyed by fire last week.
Other Schoenberg memorabilia was also destroyed, including pictures, books and posters.
“For a company that was so focused on Schoenberg’s works, this loss represents not only the destruction of property but also a great loss of culture,” Larry said in a statement.
He described the collection as “crucial” for artists who relied on “carefully selected editions” of his father’s back catalogue.
Arnold Schoenberg was born into a Jewish family in Vienna in 1874. He went on to find great success as a composer in Berlin before fleeing to the US in 1933 to escape persecution by the Nazis.
He eventually settled in Los Angeles where he continued his best songs. He was known for atonality and his 12-tone method that departed from standard harmony. He died in 1951 at the age of 76 in Los Angeles.
In a statement, Belmont said it hopes to create digital copies of the scores.
“We hope that in the near future we will be able to ‘rise from the ashes’ in a completely digital way,” the statement said.
Most of Schoenberg’s original manuscripts are kept in a museum in Vienna, Austria.
Firefighters are still fighting to contain the massive wildfires in Los Angeles that started in early January. So far they have killed at least 24 people, destroyed thousands of buildings and forced tens of thousands of people to flee their homes.
Two large fires are still burning in Los Angeles, including the massive Palisades fire that has burned more than 24,000 hectares.
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