Of the composers who wholeheartedly embraced guitar music, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco stands out. Having demonstrated an innate musical talent at an early age, he earned a degree in piano and composition while still very young under the guidance of Ildebrando Pizzetti. By the 1930’s, Castelnuovo-Tedesco was among the best known Italian composers and widely appreciated outside of Italy: important musicians such as Toscanini, Piatigorsky, Casella, Heifetz, Gieseking and Segovia performed his music. In fact, it was out of his friendship with Segovia that his love for the guitar was born and in the final years of his life he produced some of his most intimate and autobiographical compositions, written expressly for guitar. At the end of the 1930’s the enactment of anti-Semitic laws forced him to leave Italy and in 1939 he moved to the United States where he began to work, composing sound tracks for the film industry. However, his reputation as an extraordinarily well educated and refined composer spread quickly throughout Hollywood and allowed him to move beyond film to become a highly sought after teacher of music.