Schoenberg's Sheen

[relm1]

Those Santa Ana winds no doubt are a big reason why this fire spread as quickly as it did. My heart goes out to all those people who lost their homes and businesses. Hopefully, it will get contained. I believe someone has already been arrested in conjunction with one of the fires. You can correct me if I'm wrong about any of this.

It was much worse than Santa Anna winds.  It was hurricane force winds reaching 100 mph in the mountains.  We get Santa Anna winds regularly because of the geography (surrounded by mountains with a central valley funnels the winds) but here was a major pressure change + Santa Anna winds + no rain in 8 months + very high density population where the fire started.  That made it very, very difficult to evacuate quickly and the fire grew stunningly fast because of the hurricane winds.  When one thing caught on fire, embers blew miles away starting another fire.  I saw the outbreak of the fire maybe 30 minutes after it started and it was already 200 square acres.  By the end of the day, it was 10,000 square acres!  People had 10 minutes to evacuate and often got stuck by the fast moving fires spread by the winds.  It was absolutely devastating and still very present. I live a few miles away and it felt like it was snowing ash smelling like charcoal with horrible air quality.

I don't think they have a cause yet, it might just be a power line was downed by the winds.  No one has been arrested for causing the fire but lots of looters taking advantage of the property abandoned. 

[Spotted Horses]

It was much worse than Santa Anna winds.  It was hurricane force winds reaching 100 mph in the mountains.  We get Santa Anna winds regularly because of the geography (surrounded by mountains with a central valley funnels the winds) but here was a major pressure change + Santa Anna winds + no rain in 8 months + very high density population where the fire started.  That made it very, very difficult to evacuate quickly and the fire grew stunningly fast because of the hurricane winds.  When one thing caught on fire, embers blew miles away starting another fire.  I saw the outbreak of the fire maybe 30 minutes after it started and it was already 200 square acres.  By the end of the day, it was 10,000 square acres!  People had 10 minutes to evacuate and often got stuck by the fast moving fires spread by the winds.  It was absolutely devastating and still very present. I live a few miles away and it felt like it was snowing ash smelling like charcoal with horrible air quality.

I don't think they have a cause yet, it might just be a power line was downed by the winds.  No one has been arrested for causing the fire but lots of looters taking advantage of the property abandoned. 

Glad to hear of your narrow escape, although the winds are forecast to pick up again and there could be renewed danger.

The situation was similar in Ventura in November, with near hurricane force winds which caused explosive growth of the Mountain Fire, which started in Somis, and engulfed an arid hillside. The defining event was when it jumped Highway 118. There are agricultural fields extending at least a mile on either side of the highway which are irrigated and untouched by the fire. But the fire jumped miles to a hillside overlooking Camarillo Heights and down into the city. The number of homes lost was in the hundreds rather than the thousands. A total of about 20,000 acres burned.

The situation is impossible, since last year was a wet rainy season causing a lot of vegetation growth, and this year we are three months into the rainy season with no substantial rain.

To blame the Los Angeles fire department for a supposedly inadequate response strikes me as crazy. It might as well have been an atomic bomb dropped on the city. Going out and about I see columns of fire engines screaming down the highway towards the fire zone, and at one point a semi-truck with lights and sirens blaring, carrying the biggest bulldozer I ever saw.

[relm1]

The situation is impossible, since last year was a wet rainy season causing a lot of vegetation growth, and this year we are three months into the rainy season with no substantial rain.

To blame the Los Angeles fire department for a supposedly inadequate response strikes me as crazy. It might as well have been an atomic bomb dropped on the city. Going out and about I see columns of fire engines screaming down the highway towards the fire zone, and at one point a semi-truck with lights and sirens blaring, carrying the biggest bulldozer I ever saw.

LA fire departments is not to blame.  It was jewish space lasers.

[Karl Henning]

LA fire departments is not to blame.  It was jewish space lasers.

Oh, man, I knowed it!

[relm1]

So I'm hearing that none of Schoenberg's manuscripts were destroyed, they're in Vienna.  Very confused.  I assume the home destroyed was the home Schoenberg lived in when he came to America and it was the same home his now 87 year old son lives in that was destroyed. 

[AnotherSpin]

So I'm hearing that none of Schoenberg's manuscripts were destroyed, they're in Vienna.  Very confused.  I assume the home destroyed was the home Schoenberg lived in when he came to America and it was the same home his now 87 year old son lives in that was destroyed. 

I don't see any difficulty in directing jewish space lasers at Vienna.

[Spotted Horses]

So I'm hearing that none of Schoenberg's manuscripts were destroyed, they're in Vienna.  Very confused.  I assume the home destroyed was the home Schoenberg lived in when he came to America and it was the same home his now 87 year old son lives in that was destroyed. 

The NYTimes article says that the buildings destroyed were the home of Larry Schoenberg, age 83, and a separate building housing the scores and performance parts. The manuscripts are at the Schoenberg center in Vienna. Apparently the scores and digital versions of the scores were both destroyed, along with memorabilia including photographs and letters. The article also notes that Larry Schoenberg's publishing company was not the sole publisher of Schoenberg scores, but that the loss of the scores and parts in the fire would pose difficulties for artists wanting to perform the works.

[Cato]

Here is another article about the destruction of Belmont Music in the California fires:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-01-16/belmont-music-publishers-the-repository-of-iconic-composer-arnold-schoenberg-incinerated-in-palisades-fire

An excerpt:

...Schoenberg's wife, Gertrud, a librettist, and son Larry established Belmont Music Publishers in 1965. Belmont was a play on the family's surname — "beautiful mountain" — in German.

Following the composer's death in 1951, numerous people wrote to Gertrud requesting his music. There was so much back-and-forthing with the publisher in Germany that his heirs decided to create Belmont, as Gertrud owned the rights to her husband's catalog. They initially set up the business in a converted garage behind their Brentwood home, selling and renting curated editions of Schoenberg's sheet music for performances.

"We're not very business savvy people," Larry Schoenberg recalled. "We were spending more than we were collecting."

They also had to overcome the negative connotation business had in their home. "We grew up where business was kind of a dirty word," he said. His father used the derisive German term "der Gauner," which means crook or swindler.

But Belmont, which later moved to the building behind Larry Schoenberg's Pacific Palisades house, became a business successful in preserving Schoenberg's legacy, making his works accessible to the world.

Last September marked the 150th anniversary of Schoenberg's birth. A flurry of performances took place in Europe and the United States, including by the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Many of these performances got their scores from Belmont....

[Karl Henning]

I have the sneaking suspicion that the BSO didn't much honor last year's sesquicentenary. 

[Karl Henning]

Of course, there are "spiritual bluehairs" who have never forgiven Levine for all the Schoenberg he programmed.

[T. D.]

I have the sneaking suspicion that the BSO didn't much honor last year's sesquicentenary.

Of course, there are "spiritual bluehairs" who have never forgiven Levine for all the Schoenberg he programmed.

I have some serious problems with Levine, but not for that reason...

[Karl Henning]

I have some serious problems with Levine, but not for that reason...

Exactly. 

[Cato]

Of course, there are "spiritual bluehairs" who have never forgiven Levine for all the Schoenberg he programmed.

His 1980's performance on DGG of the orchestral pieces of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern with the Berlin Philharmonic was just fantastic!

[Den glemte sønnen]

His 1980's performance on DGG of the orchestral pieces of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern with the Berlin Philharmonic was just fantastic!

Great recording! All of those Levine recordings of the Second Viennese School are top-notch. I know I'm not supposed to like Levine after all he's done, but I can't help but be drawn to so many of his performances and I still enjoy so many of them --- like his Mahler for example. His recording of the 3rd is still one of those landmark performances for me.

[Mandryka]

The Beardslee/Helps Hanging Gardens -- has this ever been liberated from the vinyl commercially? It's good!

https://soundcloud.com/daniel-plante-511223801/schoenberg-book-of-the-hanging-gardens-beardslee-helps-son-nova-2

[brewski]

A friend alerted me to this 2014 performance of Pierrot Lunaire, which he is using in his musicology class. I had never heard this version, which features soprano Kiera Duffy, members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and conductor Cristian Măcelaru. Was trying to recall where I heard Duffy, and then it came: she was the lead in the world premiere of Missy Mazzoli's opera, Breaking the Waves.

[foxandpeng]

I confess that I have never, ever listened to anything by Schoenberg. My fault, of course, but nevertheless true.

[Karl Henning]

I confess that I have never, ever listened to anything by Schoenberg. My fault, of course, but nevertheless true.

This won't work for everyone (possibly my greatest understatement of the day) but it befell that Pierrot was my introduction to Schoenberg, and it won me right over. Here you do not actually invite suggestions, but here's mine (and a live perf. too!):

[ritter]

This won't work for everyone (possibly my greatest understatement of the day) but it befell that Pierrot was my introduction to Schoenberg, and it won me right over. Here you do not actually invite suggestions, but here's mine (and a live perf. too!):

Very nice, Karl, but that ain't Pierrot lunaire, it's  the Serenade.   Have you been listening to the wrong work all these years?    (Just kidding, of course.)

The Serenade is one of my favourite Schoenberg works!

Good evening to you!

[T. D.]

This solo piano recording is a personal favorite. The works are ordered chronologically and (per back cover) trace AS's "compositional evolution".