The composer’s extensive archive was destroyed in the LA fires

100,000 scores of Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg have been destroyed in the Los Angeles fires.

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

Although no original manuscripts were lost, the music held by Belmont Music Publishing was the main collection of scores loaned to orchestras and musicians.

Leon Botstein, director of the American Symphony Orchestra, said these have been an “indispensable resource” for performing musicians.

Schoenberg’s son, Larry, 83, said he kept the scores in an outbuilding behind his house. Both buildings were destroyed in fires last week.

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

“For a company that focused solely on Schoenberg’s works, this loss is not only a physical destruction of property, but a profound cultural blow,” Larry said in a statement.

He says the collection is “indispensable” for musicians who rely on the “indispensable editions” 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 avoid Nazi persecution.

He eventually settled in Los Angeles where he continued his innovative compositions. He was known for his atonality and his 12-tone technique that deviated from traditional harmonies. He died in 1951 at the age of 76 in Los Angeles.

In a statement Belmont said he hoped 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 fully digital form,” the statement said.

Most of Schoenberg’s original manuscripts are housed in a museum in Vienna, Austria.

Firefighters are still struggling to control the massive fires that broke out in Los Angeles in early January. So far at least 24 people have been killed, thousands of buildings have been destroyed and tens of thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes.

Two large fires are still burning in Los Angeles, including the largest fire in the Palisades that has burned more than 24,000 acres.