The American Symphony Orchestra and the Bard Festival Chorale shortly before the start of the program
The archive holding the publicly available work of the great twentieth-century composer Arnold Schoenberg was destroyed last week when the wildfires in Southern California burnt down the warehouse holding printed scores and sheet music. No original manuscripts were lost in the conflagration, but the loss could spell trouble for orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and other groups and individuals who had planned to perform some of Schoenberg’s works.
The printed music was owned by Belmont Music Publishers, a company founded by his heirs. “It’s brutal. We lost everything,” Larry Schoenberg, the composer’s son, told a reporter.
The fire also destroyed Schoenberg memorabilia, including photographs, letters, posters, books, and arrangements by other composers of Schoenberg pieces.
Arnold Schoenberg left for the United States from Paris while on vacation, without returning either to his home in Berlin or to his native Austria.
Upon arriving in the United States, where he remained for the rest of his life, he changed the spelling of his surname, Schönberg, to the alternate spelling Schoenberg. [Editor’s note: The letter “ö” is one of the four letters found in German but not in English and it can be replaced by the digraph “oe” in cases where a typewriter or typeface does not have the “ö”.]
FBT and The Travelist Editorial Director and Chief Music Critic Jonathan Spira said that Belmont has played an extraordinary role in making Schoenberg’s music available to the public. Last year, the American Symphony Orchestra performed his oratorio “Gurrelieder” at Carnegie Hall, using scores from Belmont, a performance for which Spira said he was present. To the classical music world, Spira said, the loss was a catastrophe. “The music Belmont offered was difficult if not impossible to find elsewhere.”
(Photo: Accura Media Group)
