Between 1953 and 1967, the Italian composer Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco wrote a series of Greeting Cards. These 52 musical folios, 21 of which were written for the guitar – an instrument that had inspired him since he first heard Segovia perform – are pen portraits of admired colleagues. Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s imagination and technical mastery are reinforced by the use of rhythms associated with the dedicatees’ nationality or through evocations inspired by their names. The cycle offers a surprising, generous and rewarding body of musical cryptology that belies its small-scale form.