April 3, 2007

• HB: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

  Today marks the birthday of composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco (1895-1968).  His connection to film music is that he gave private composition lessons to a young John Williams.  Castelnuovo-Tedesco is otherwise remembered today for his first guitar concerto but he composed a number of other fine works for guitar especially.  His music is tuneful with a semi-Barogue sound often cast within more Classical period models.  This is coupled often with wonderfully rhtyhmically interesting melodies.  As a composer of mostly intimate pieces, he is perhaps less well-known than other 20th Century composers who wrote music that refused to be classified with the more avante garde atonalists.

  Naxos released a disc of some of his religious-influenced pieces as part of a larger series in their Jewish Heritage Series supported from the Milken Archive.  It includes a gorgeous piece for soprano and orchestra, the cantata Naomi and Ruth, and the more interesting Sacred Service.

  

  The guitarist John Williams is a personal performance favorite and it is still available packaged with several other standard guitar and orchestra pieces part of the classic literature.

  

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