Giovanni "Nino"Rota Rinaldi (/ˈroʊtə/;Italian:[dʒoˈvanniˈniːnoˈrɔːtariˈnaldi]; 3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979)^[1] was an Italiancomposer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for hisfilm scores, notably for the films ofFederico Fellini andLuchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two ofFranco Zeffirelli'sShakespeare screen adaptations, and for the first two installments ofFrancis Ford Coppola'sThe Godfather trilogy, earning theAcademy Award for Best Original Score forThe Godfather Part II (1974).^[2]

Nino Rota
Rota in 1976
Born	Giovanni Rota Rinaldi 3 December 1911 Milan,Kingdom of Italy
Died	10 April 1979(1979-04-10) (aged 67) Rome, Italy
Occupations	Composer pianist conductor academic
Children	Nina Rota
Website	ninorota.com

During his long career, Rota was an extraordinarily prolific composer, especially of music for the cinema. He wrote more than 150 scores for Italian and international productions from the 1930s until his death in 1979 – an average of three scores each year over a 46-year period, and in his most productive period from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s he wrote as many as ten scores every year, and sometimes more, with a remarkable thirteen film scores to his credit in 1954. Alongside this great body of film work, he composed tenoperas, fiveballets and dozens of other orchestral, choral and chamber works, the best known being his string concerto. He also composed the music for many theatre productions by Visconti, Zeffirelli andEduardo De Filippo^[3] as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale inBari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

Giovanni Rota Rinaldi was born on 3 December 1911 into a musical family inMilan, Italy.^[1] Rota was a renownedchild prodigy – his firstoratorio,L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista, was written at age 11^[4] and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy afterHans Christian Andersen,Il Principe Porcaro, was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926. He studied at the Milan conservatory there underGiacomo Orefice^[3] and then undertook serious study of composition underIldebrando Pizzetti andAlfredo Casella at theConservatorio Santa Cecilia inRome, graduating in 1930.^[5]

Encouraged byArturo Toscanini, Rota moved to the United States, where he lived from 1930 to 1932. He won a scholarship to theCurtis Institute ofPhiladelphia, where he was taught conducting byFritz Reiner and hadRosario Scalero as an instructor in composition.^[5] Returning to Milan, he wrote a thesis on theRenaissance composerGioseffo Zarlino. Rota earned a degree in literature from the University of Milan, graduating in 1937, and began a teaching career that led to the directorship of the Liceo Musicale inBari, a title he held from 1950 until 1978.^[5]

Nino Rota wrote scores to more than 150 films. These included the score forThe Glass Mountain in 1949,^[1] which was notable for the singing ofTito Gobbi. The film won a number of awards.

In his entry on Rota in the 1988 edition ofThe Concise Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Composers and Musicians, music scholarNicolas Slonimsky described him as "brilliant" and stated that his musical style:

demonstrates a great facility and even felicity, with occasional daring excursions intododecaphony. However, his most durable compositions are related to his music for the cinema; he composed the soundtracks of a great number of films by the Italian director Federico Fellini covering the period from 1950 to 1979.^[5]

One of Rota's compositional habits, however, came up for disapproving remarks: his penchant for pastiche of various past styles, which quite often turned into outright quotation of his own earlier music or even others' music. One of the most noticed examples of such incorporation is his use of theLarghetto fromDvorák'sSerenade for Strings in E major as a theme for a character in Fellini'sLa Strada.^[6]

During the 1940s, Rota composed scores for more than 32 films, includingRenato Castellani'sZaza [it] (1944). His association with Fellini began withLo Sceicco Bianco (The White Sheik) (1952), followed byI Vitelloni (1953) andLa Strada (The Road) (1954).^[1] They continued to work together for decades, and Fellini recalled:

The most precious collaborator I have ever had, I say it straightaway and don't even have to hesitate, was Nino Rota — between us, immediately, a complete, total, harmony ... He had a geometric imagination, a musical approach worthy of celestial spheres. He thus had no need to see images from my movies. When I asked him about the melodies he had in mind to comment one sequence or another, I clearly realized he was not concerned with images at all. His world was inner, inside himself, and reality had no way to enter it.^[7]

The relationship between Fellini and Rota was so strong that at Fellini's funeralGiulietta Masina, Fellini's wife, asked trumpeterMauro Maur to play Rota'sImprovviso dell'Angelo in the Basilica diSanta Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri in Rome.^[8]

Rota's score for Fellini's8½ (1963) is often cited as one of the factors that makes the film cohesive. His score for Fellini'sJuliet of the Spirits (1965) included a collaboration withEugene Walter on the song, "Go Milk the Moon" (cut from the final version of the film), and they teamed again for the song "What Is a Youth?", part of Rota's score forFranco Zeffirelli'sRomeo and Juliet.

TheAmerican Film Institute ranked Rota's score forThe Godfather number 5 ontheir list of the greatest film scores. After being nominated for an Academy Award for this score, the nomination was later revoked when it was discovered that Rota recycled a theme from a previous score, one he wrote two decades prior for the filmFortunella and thus no longer considered original despite being played differently.^[2][9] The nomination was then given to the filmSleuth, whileCharlie Chaplin and two co-authors for their score featured inLimelight, a 21-year-old film that had just become eligible because it had not been screened inLos Angeles until 1972, went on to win the award.^[2][9] He went on to win an Oscar for his score forThe Godfather Part II. His score forWar and Peace was also nominated for the list.

Rota wrote numerous concerti and other orchestral works as well as piano, chamber and choral music, much of which has been recorded and released on CD. After his death fromheart failure^[10] in 1979, Rota's music was the subject ofHal Willner's 1981tribute albumAmarcord Nino Rota, which featured several jazz musicians who were relatively unknown at the time who went on to become famous.Gus Van Sant used some of Rota's music in his 2007 filmParanoid Park and directorMichael Winterbottom used several Rota selections in the 2005 filmTristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.Danny Elfman frequently cites Nino Rota as a major influence (particularly on his scores for the Pee-Wee films). DirectorMario Monicelli filmed a documentaryUn amico magico: il maestro Nino Rota which featured interviews withFranco Zeffirelli andRiccardo Muti (a student under Rota at Bari Conservatory), and was followed by a German documentaryNino Rota - Un maestro della musica. Both explored film and concert sides of the composer.

His 1955 operaIl cappello di paglia di Firenze (The Florentine Straw Hat) is an adaptation of the play byEugène Labiche and was presented by theSanta Fe Opera in 1977. In 2005 his operaAladino e la lampada magica (Aladdin and the Magical Lamp), with Cosmin Ifrim in the title role, was performed in German translation at theVienna State Opera and released on DVD.Il cappello di paglia di Firenze andAladino e la lampada magica are regularly staged in Europe as are many symphonic and chamber titles

Written for a radio production byRAI in 1950, his short opera,I due timidi (The Two Timid Ones), was presented by the Santa Fe Opera as part of their pre-season "One-Hour Opera" program in May/June 2008.

Rota had one daughter, Nina Rota, from a relationship with pianist Magda Longari.^[11]

Rota died in Rome on 10 April 1979,^[1] aged 67, from acoronary thrombosis.

• Kennedy, Michael (2006),The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 985 pages,ISBN 0-19-861459-4
• Richard Dyer.Nino Rota: Music, Film, and Feeling. New York: Palgrave and Macmillan (on behalf of the British Film Institute), 2010.
• Franco Sciannameo.Nino Rota's The Godfather Trilogy: A Film Score Guide. Scarecrow Press, 2010.
• John Simon.The Other Rota. The New Criterion, Vol. 34, No. 10 / June 2016

• Official website
• Nino Rota atIMDb
• Schott Music profile