Editing Nino Rota

{{Short description|Italian composer (1911–1979)}}
{{Infobox person
| name                      = Nino Rota
| image                     = Nino Rota.jpg
| caption                   = Rota in 1976
| birth_name                = Giovanni Rota Rinaldi
| birth_date                = 3 December 1911
| birth_place               = [[Milan]], [[Kingdom of Italy]]
| death_date                = {{Death date and age|df=y|1979|4|10|1911|12|3}}
| death_place               = [[Rome]], Italy
| education                 = 
| occupation                = {{hlist|Composer|pianist|conductor|academic}}
| children                  = Nina Rota
| awards                    = 
| website                   = {{URL|ninorota.com}}
}}

'''Giovanni''' "'''Nino'''" '''Rota Rinaldi''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|r|oʊ|t|ə}}; {{IPA|it|dʒoˈvanni ˈniːno ˈrɔːta riˈnaldi|lang}}; 3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979)<ref name="LarkinGE">{{cite book|title=[[Encyclopedia of Popular Music|The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music]]|editor=[[Colin Larkin (writer)|Colin Larkin]]|publisher=[[Guinness Publishing]]|date=1992|edition=First|isbn=0-85112-939-0|page=2149}}</ref> was an Italian [[composer]], pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his [[film score]]s, notably for the films of [[Federico Fellini]] and [[Luchino Visconti]]. He also composed the music for two of [[Franco Zeffirelli]]'s [[List of William Shakespeare screen adaptations|Shakespeare screen adaptations]], and for the first two installments of [[Francis Ford Coppola]]'s [[The Godfather (film series)|''The Godfather'' trilogy]], earning the [[Academy Award for Best Original Score]] for ''[[The Godfather Part II]]'' (1974).<ref name="Revoked Oscars">{{cite web |url=https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/73722/8-oscar-nominations-were-revoked |title=9 Oscar Nominations That Were Revoked|work=MentalFloss.com |first=Rudie|last=Obias|date=February 23, 2019|access-date=June 1, 2020}}</ref>

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 ten [[opera]]s, five [[ballet]]s 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 and [[Eduardo De Filippo]]<ref name="NinoRota.com - Biography">{{Cite web|url=http://www.ninorota.com/|title=Nino Rota Music Catalogue|website=Ninorota.com|access-date=8 October 2021}}</ref> as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in [[Bari]], Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

==Early career==
[[File:Nino_Rota_1923.jpg|thumb|200px|left|Rota at age 12]]
Giovanni Rota Rinaldi was born on 3 December 1911 into a musical family in [[Milan]], Italy.<ref name="LarkinGE"/> Rota was a renowned [[child prodigy]] – his first ''[[oratorio]]'', ''L'infanzia di San Giovanni Battista'', was written at age 11<ref>Nicholas Slonimsky, ''The Concise Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Composers and Musicians'' (Simon & Schuster, London, 1988, {{ISBN|0-671-69896-6}}), p. 1063</ref> and performed in Milan and Paris as early as 1923; his three-act lyrical comedy after [[Hans Christian Andersen]], ''Il Principe Porcaro'', was composed when he was just 13 and published in 1926. He studied at the Milan conservatory there under [[Giacomo Orefice]]<ref name="NinoRota.com - Biography"/> and then undertook serious study of composition under [[Ildebrando Pizzetti]] and [[Alfredo Casella]] at the [[Conservatorio Santa Cecilia]] in [[Rome]], graduating in 1930.<ref name="Slonimsky, p. 1063">Slonimsky, p. 1063</ref>

Encouraged by [[Arturo Toscanini]], Rota moved to the United States, where he lived from 1930 to 1932. He won a scholarship to the [[Curtis Institute]] of [[Philadelphia, Pennsylvania|Philadelphia]], where he was taught conducting by [[Fritz Reiner]] and had [[Rosario Scalero]] as an instructor in composition.<ref name="Slonimsky, p. 1063"/> Returning to Milan, he wrote a thesis on the [[Renaissance music|Renaissance]] composer [[Gioseffo 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 in [[Bari, Italy|Bari]], a title he held from 1950 until 1978.<ref name="Slonimsky, p. 1063"/>

==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> 

==Orchestral, chamber and choral music==
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 from [[congestive heart failure|heart failure]]<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.nndb.com/people/408/000093129/|title=Nino Rota|website=Nndb.com|access-date=8 October 2021}}</ref> in 1979, Rota's music was the subject of [[Hal Willner]]'s 1981 [[tribute album]] ''[[Amarcord 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 film ''[[Paranoid Park (film)|Paranoid Park]]'' and director [[Michael Winterbottom]] used several Rota selections in the 2005 film ''[[A Cock and Bull Story|Tristram 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). Director [[Mario Monicelli]] filmed a documentary ''Un amico magico: il maestro Nino Rota'' which featured interviews with [[Franco Zeffirelli]] and [[Riccardo Muti]] (a student under Rota at Bari Conservatory), and was followed by a German documentary ''Nino Rota - Un maestro della musica''. Both explored film and concert sides of the composer.

==Operas==
His 1955 opera ''[[Il cappello di paglia di Firenze]]'' (''The Florentine Straw Hat'') is an adaptation of the play by [[Eugène Labiche]] and was presented by the [[Santa Fe Opera]] in 1977. In 2005 his opera ''Aladino e la lampada magica'' (''Aladdin and the Magical Lamp''), with Cosmin Ifrim in the title role, was performed in German translation at the [[Vienna State Opera]] and released on DVD.  ''[[Il cappello di paglia di Firenze]]'' and ''Aladino e la lampada magica'' are regularly staged in Europe as are many symphonic and chamber titles

Written for a radio production by [[RAI]] 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.

==Personal life and death==
Rota had one daughter, Nina Rota, from a relationship with pianist Magda Longari.<ref>Lombardi, Francesco, [https://books.google.com/books?id=pNTiZBQ6t2EC&q=longari "Nino Rota: un timido protagonista del Novecento musicale"] (EDT, Torino, 2012, ISBN 9788866397946, 8866397946), p. 189</ref>

Rota died in Rome on 10 April 1979,<ref name="LarkinGE"/> aged 67, from a [[coronary thrombosis]].

==Works==
{{See|List of compositions by Nino Rota|List of film scores by Nino Rota}}

==Discography==
{{See|Nino Rota discography}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
*[[Michael Kennedy (music critic)|Kennedy, Michael]] (2006), ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'', 985 pages, {{ISBN|0-19-861459-4}}
*Richard Dyer. ''[https://www.amazon.com/Nino-Rota-Music-Film-Feeling/dp/1844572102 Nino Rota: Music, Film, and Feeling]''. New York: Palgrave and Macmillan (on behalf of the British Film Institute), 2010.
*Franco Sciannameo. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=qTwURkWIfoAC Nino Rota's The Godfather Trilogy: A Film Score Guide]''. Scarecrow Press, 2010.
*John Simon. ''[http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/rota-simon-2354 The Other Rota]''. The New Criterion, Vol. 34, No. 10 / June 2016

==External links==
{{Commons category}} {{Wikiquote}}
* {{Official website|http://www.ninorota.com/}}
* {{IMDb name|65}}
* [https://archive.today/20130202023107/http://www.schott-music.com/shop/persons/featured/16370/news/ Schott Music] profile

{{Nino Rota}}
{{Navboxes
|title = Awards for Nino Rota
|list = 
{{AcademyAwardBestOriginalScore 1961-1980}}
{{BAFTA Award for Best Original Music}}
{{David di Donatello Best Score}}
{{Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score}}
{{Grammy Award for Best Score Soundtrack for Visual Media}}
{{Nastro d'Argento Best Score}}
}}
{{Godfather}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rota, Nino}}
[[Category:1911 births]]
[[Category:1979 deaths]]
[[Category:20th-century Italian classical composers]]
[[Category:20th-century male composers]]
[[Category:20th-century Italian male musicians]]
[[Category:Conservatorio Santa Cecilia alumni]]
[[Category:Best Original Music BAFTA Award winners]]
[[Category:Best Original Music Score Academy Award winners]]
[[Category:Composers for carillon]]
[[Category:Curtis Institute of Music alumni]]
[[Category:David di Donatello winners]]
[[Category:Deaths from coronary thrombosis]]
[[Category:Golden Globe Award–winning musicians]]
[[Category:Grammy Award winners]]
[[Category:Italian film score composers]]
[[Category:Italian male classical composers]]
[[Category:Italian male film score composers]]
[[Category:Composers from Milan]]
[[Category:Nastro d'Argento winners]]
[[Category:Milan Conservatory alumni]]