Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1968, 72-year-old Italian-born American composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco died in Beverley Hills. As a young man, he was already known as a rising composer, concert pianist, music critic and essayist. In 1939 he left Mussolini’s Italy and came to America, and like a lot of European musicians of the time, he found work writing film scores for major Hollywood studios.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco became an American citizen, and eventually taught at the Los Angeles Conservatory, where his pupils included many famous names from the next generation of film composers, including Jerry Goldsmith, Henry Mancini, Andre Previn, Nelson Riddle and John Williams.

In addition to film scores, Castelnuovo-Tedesco composed a signifigant body of concert music, including concertos for the likes of Heifetz and Segovia.

A number of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s works are directly related to his Jewish faith, including Naomi and Ruth, a choral work from 1947. The composer’s mother was named Naomi, and he claimed the faithful Ruth in the Biblical story reminded him of his own wife, Clara. “In a certain sense,” he wrote, “it was really my symbolic autobiography, existing before I decided to write — to open my heart — in these pages.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968): Naomi and Ruth; St. Martin’s Academy and Chorus; Sir Neville Marriner, conductor; Naxos 8.559404

On This Day

Births

• 1937 - American composer David Del Tredici, in Cloverdale, Calif.;

Deaths

• 1736 - Italian composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, 26 (of consumption), in Pozzuoli

• 1881 - Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky (Gregorian date: Mar. 28)

• 1968 - Italian-born American composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, 62, in Los Angeles

• 1985 - American composer Roger Sessions, 88, in Princeton, New Jersey

Premieres

• 1735 - Handel: Organ Concertos Nos. 2-3 (Julian date: March 5)

• 1750 - Handel: oratorio Theodora, in London at the Covent Garden Theater. At the same event, the possible premiere of Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 5 as well (Gregorian date: March 27).

• 1751 - Handel: oratorio The Choice of Hercules in London at the Covent Garden Theater. At the same event, Handel’s Organ Concerto No. 3 premieres following Act II of a revival performance of Handel’s cantata Alexander’s Feast on the same program (Gregorian date: March 27).

• 1833 - Bellini: opera Beatrice di Tenda in Venice at the Teatro la Fenice

• 1870 - Tchaikovsky: fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, in Moscow, with Nicolas Rubinstien conducting (Julian date: Mar. 4)

• 1871 - Tchaikovsky: String Quartet No. 1, in Moscow, by members of the Russian Musical Society (Gregorian date: Mar. 28)

• 1879 - Dvorák: choral setting of Psalm No. 149, in Prague

• 1888 - American premiere of the revised version of Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 (Romantic), with New York Philharmonic-Society conducted by Anton Seidl. In the preface to a book on Bruckner, the elderly conductor Walter Damrosch claimed he conducted the American premiere of this symphony (His memory played him false: Damrosch led the first American performance of Bruckner’s third Symphony).

• 1894 - Massenet: opera Thaïs, at the Paris Opéra

• 1938 - Martinu: opera Julietta, in Prague at the National Theater

• 1942 - Martinu: Sinfonietta Giocosa, for piano and chamber orchestra, in New York City

• 2002 - Paul Schoenfield: Nocturne for solo cello, oboe and strings, by cellist Peter Howard, with oboist Kathryn Greenbank and the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Gilbert Varga conducting.