Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Casella also ensured that Castelnuovo's works would be included in the repertoires of the Società Italiana di Musica Moderna (later the Corporazione delle Nuove Musiche), granting him exposure throughout Europe as one of Italy's up-and-coming young composers.

2 (1931), written at the request of Jascha Heifetz, was also an expression of his pride in his Jewish origins, or as he described it, the "splendor of past days", in the face of rising anti-Semitism that was sweeping across much of Europe.

At the 1932 festival of the International Society of Contemporary Music, held in Venice, Castelnuovo-Tedesco first met the Spanish guitarist Andrés Segovia.

[3] He wrote to Arturo Toscanini, the former musical director of La Scala, and violinist Jascha Heifetz, explaining his plight, and both responded with support.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco left Italy in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, and settled in Larchmont, Westchester County, New York (state).

[5] Like many artists who fled fascism, Castelnuovo-Tedesco ended up in Hollywood, where, with the help of Jascha Heifetz, he landed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer as a film composer.

As a teacher, Castelnuovo-Tedesco had a significant influence on other major film composers, including Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle, Herman Stein and André Previn.

Jerry Goldsmith, Marty Paich and John Williams were all his pupils,[6] as was Scott Bradley, who studied privately with him while both were on staff at MGM.

[7] His relationship to Hollywood was ambiguous: later in life he downplayed the influence that it had on his own work, but he also believed that it was an essentially American artform, much as opera was European.

In 1958 he won the Concorso Campari with the opera The Merchant of Venice, which was first performed in 1961 at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino under the baton of Gianandrea Gavazzeni.

Castelnuovo-Tedesco's autobiography, A life in music: a book of memories, written shortly before his death, was published decades later: Other writings by the composer have been catalogued.