LAJS - Castelnuovo Bio

Los Angeles Jewish Symphony
Dr. Noreen Green, Artistic Director

Biography of
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

On April 3, 1895, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was born into an Italian banking family that had been in Tuscany for over four hundred years. In 1492, as a result of the Expulsion, the Castilla Nueva family emigrated from Spain, landed at the port of Livorno, and settled in Tuscany. By the 1800s the name had evolved into Castelnuovo and in the nineteenth century, Mario’s paternal great aunt (Enrichetta) married Samuel Tedesco. They had no children and they appointed as their heir my grandfather, on condition that the family would [also] assume the name ‘Tedesco,’ in order that it would not come to an end; so my father, Amedeo, became 'Castelnuovo-Tedesco,’ while the other cousins were still only ‘Castelnuovo.’

Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s mother provided his first musical training until his
formal musical education began at the Istituto Musicale Cherubini in Florence in 1909. In 1913 he received his “licenza liceale” [high school diploma] and by 1914 his degree in piano. In 1918 he received his “Diploma di Composizione” from the Liceo Musicale di Bologna. Easily the most important musical figure in Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s early development was Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880-1968), one of Italy’s leading composers.

In 1939, as a result of the fascist racial laws, Castelnuovo-Tedesco
emigrated with his family to America where he settled in Los Angeles where he was financially able to support himself and his family as a film composer. The musical high point of his post-war career occurred in 1958 when his opera Il mercante di Venezia was awarded the first prize of the Concorso Internazionale Campari sponsored by La Scala.

In addition to his work as a composer, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was very
influential as a teacher. From the late 1940s he was associated with the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (later California Institute of the Arts) remaining active in both composition and teaching until his death on March 16, 1968.

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