On today’s date in 1968, a 72-year old Italian-born American composer named Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco died in Beverly Hills, California. As a young man, Castelnuovo-Tedesco 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 significant body of concert music, including concertos for the likes of Heifetz and Sergovia. One high point in the composer’s post-war career occurred in the 1960s, when his Shakespearean opera “The Merchant of Venice” was staged in both Italy and Los Angeles.

A number of Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s works are directly related to his Jewish faith, including a choral work from 1947, entitled “Naomi and Ruth.” 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.”