On a more serious note, I just found out that the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California will be demolished any day now. I have to admit, I didn’t realize this was happening until a former musicology professor of mine posted this on Facebook. In short, the Arnold Schoenberg Institute (or ASI) will be demolished to make room for the ever-growing (George Lucas) Cinema-Television department at USC (or maybe it’s making room for the Ewoks). In fact, I think I may have taken this building for granted (I had my composition forum class at USC there, saw a couple of recitals, and now that I think of it, I had my sophomore class composition concert there.). Considering that it once housed all of Schoenberg’s documents, etc., I think this is a very sad thing. Not only is this building historically significant, but architecturally it’s pretty cool.
Here are some links about the ASI, including the ugly legal battle that USC had with the Schoenberg family:
http://www.usc.edu/libraries/archives/schoenberg/building.htm
http://www.societymusictheory.org/html/journals-discussion/newsletter/SMT.NL20.2/schoenberg-inst.html
http://www.usc.edu/uscnews/stories/1769.html
http://www.schoenberglaw.com/randols/private/schoenberg/lawsuit/npr.html