A recording of Castelnuovo-Tedesco performing a selection from his Tre corali su melodie ebraiche at the Sagra Musicale Umbra in Perugia in 1954 provides a rare opportunity to hear the composer at the piano. The recording, which was recently posted online, was originally broadcast in 1974 on the New York radio show “The Music of Israel,” hosted by Dr. Avraham Samuel Soltes.
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“Where can I find more information about Los Caprichos de Goya ?” is a question that often arises.
For those wishing to learn more about this cycle, which the composer himself described as his most ambitious guitar work, there are several primary sources (currently available only in Italian): the pages Mario dedicated to the work in his autobiography, Una Vita di Musica: Un Libro di Ricordi, published by Cadmo in 2005, as well as the letters of Andres Segovia to the composer, published in the volume Caro Mario: Lettere a Castelnuovo-Tedesco, edited by Angelo Gilardino and published by Edizioni Curci in 2018. Gilardino also discusses the work in the biography Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco: Un Fiorentino a Beverly Hills also published in 2018 by Curci In English, one can consult Lily Afshar’s 1989 dissertation, “Los Caprichos de Goya and their relation to Goya’s etchings” and several other doctoral theses, as well as the liner notes to Zoran Dukic’s 2009 recording of Los Caprichos for Naxos.
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Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco mused in his autobiography that if by chance his name were still remembered 100 years hence, musicologists might hear the title Suite 508 and ask, “What happened to the other 507 suites?”
He explained the origin of the title: Suite 508 was the number of his apartment in the Kellogg Center at Michigan State University (MSU) when he spent a semester as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the autumn of 1959. His stay in Michigan took place at the height of his post-war career, after he had made international headlines when he won the International Campari Prize for his opera The Merchant of Venice.
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