On the morning of 14 January 2016 a fire started in the Lithuanian Composers’ House, in which Music Information Centre Lithuania is also located. The equipment storage room was completely destroyed in the fire. It held all the digital copies of recordings of work by Lithuanian composers made from 1960 to 2015, comprising 994 CDs and more than 60 other sound media items. Even though the actual damage is still being evaluated, it is possible to say at this preliminary stage that the MICL archives have lost about 4500 copies of recordings held on CD-Rs.

Even though this is a serious blow to Music Information Centre Lithuania’s sound archives – only 62 CD-R format copies had been made of the 994 sound media items, an activity undertaken over a number of years – the damage to the musical culture of Lithuania is not drastic and not irreversible. On the above-mentioned 994 sound media files were stored digitalised sound recordings made by the Vilnius Recording Studio and the Lithuanian Composers’ Union recording studio on magnetic tapes, copies of sound recordings by Lithuanian National Radio and Television and the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, as well as duplicates of sound recordings held in composers’ personal archives. Only a very small part of the archive destroyed in the fire was made up of items which may no longer exist in any other format.

The magnetic tapes (about 700 items) and paper manuscripts (about 6000 items) stored in the Lithuanian Composers’ House archives were not damaged in the fire. The computerised sound recording files of work by Lithuanian composers (more than 1700 items) also survived.

Music Information Centre Lithuania and the Lithuanian Composers’ Union are grateful to everyone that informed the Vilnius Fire Service of the fire, as well as those that have offered moral support and help.

Music Information Centre Lithuania