Editing Nino Rota (section)

==Film scores==
Nino Rota wrote scores to more than 150 films. These included the score for ''[[The Glass Mountain (1949 film)|The Glass Mountain]]'' in 1949,<ref name="LarkinGE"/> which was notable for the singing of [[Tito Gobbi]]. The film won a number of awards.

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

{{quote|demonstrates a great facility and even felicity, with occasional daring excursions into [[dodecaphony]]. 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.<ref name="Slonimsky, p. 1063"/>}}

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 the ''[[Larghetto]]'' from [[Antonín Dvořák|Dvorák]]'s [[Serenade for Strings (Dvořák)|''Serenade for Strings in E major'']]  as a theme for a character in Fellini's ''[[La Strada]]''.<ref>''[[AllMusic]]''. [http://www.allmusic.com/composition/le-moli%C3%A8re-imaginaire-ballet-suite-for-orchestra-mc0002489811 Nino Rota - ''Le Molière imaginaire'', ballet suite for orchestra]</ref>

During the 1940s, Rota composed scores for more than 32 films, including [[Renato Castellani]]'s ''{{Interlanguage link multi|Zaza (1944 film)|it|3=Zazà (film 1944)|lt=Zaza}}'' (1944). His association with Fellini began with ''[[Lo Sceicco Bianco]] ([[The White Sheik]])'' (1952), followed by ''[[I Vitelloni]]'' (1953) and ''[[La Strada]] (The Road)'' (1954).<ref name="LarkinGE"/> They continued to work together for decades, and Fellini recalled:

{{quote|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.<ref>[http://www.cadrage.net/films/orchestrarehearsal/orchestrarehearsal.html Rota & Fellini] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101120124900/http://cadrage.net/films/orchestrarehearsal/orchestrarehearsal.html |date=2010-11-20 }}, ''Cadrage'', April/May 2003</ref>}}

The relationship between Fellini and Rota was so strong that at Fellini's funeral [[Giulietta Masina]], Fellini's wife, asked trumpeter [[Mauro Maur]] to play Rota's ''Improvviso dell'Angelo'' in the Basilica di [[Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri]] in Rome.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.santamariadegliangeliroma.it/paginamastersing.html?codice_url=fellini_funerali&lingua=ITALIANO&ramo_home=Eventi|title=fellini_funerali ITALIANO &#124; Basilica di Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri alle Terme di Diocleziano di Roma|website=Santamariadegliangeliroma.it|access-date=8 October 2021}}</ref>

Rota's score for Fellini's ''[[8½]]'' (1963) is often cited as one of the factors that makes the film cohesive. His score for Fellini's ''[[Juliet of the Spirits]]'' (1965) included a collaboration with [[Eugene Walter]] on the song, "Go Milk the Moon" (cut from the final version of the film), and they teamed again for the song "[[Romeo and Juliet 1968 film soundtrack|What Is a Youth?]]", part of Rota's score for [[Franco Zeffirelli]]'s ''[[Romeo and Juliet (1968 film)|Romeo and Juliet]]''.

The [[American Film Institute]] ranked Rota's score for ''[[The Godfather]]'' number 5 on [[AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores|their 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 film ''[[Fortunella (film)|Fortunella]]'' and thus no longer considered original despite being played differently.<ref name="Revoked Oscars"/><ref name="The case of Nino Rota">{{cite web |url=https://www.copyrightuser.org/educate/the-game-is-on/episode-4-case-file-30/|title=30. The Creative Copy|work=copyrightuser.org|date=2 April 2018|access-date= June 1, 2020}}</ref> The nomination was then given to the film ''[[Sleuth (1972 film)|Sleuth]]'', while [[Charlie Chaplin]] and two co-authors for their score featured in ''[[Limelight (1952 film)|Limelight]]'', a 21-year-old film that had just become eligible because it had not been screened in [[Los Angeles, California|Los Angeles]] until 1972, went on to win the award.<ref name="Revoked Oscars"/><ref name="The case of Nino Rota"/>  He went on to win an Oscar for his score for ''[[The Godfather Part II]]''. His score for ''[[War and Peace (1956 film)|War and Peace]]'' was also nominated for the list. 

Rota's work in film scores is referenced in the song "Reno Dakota" on the album ''[[69 Love Songs]]'' by [[The Magnetic Fields]].<ref>{{Citation |title=The Magnetic Fields – Reno Dakota |url=https://genius.com/The-magnetic-fields-reno-dakota-lyrics |access-date=2025-04-10}}</ref>