The Godfather Waltz – Nino Rota (with sheet music)
Sheet Music download here.
Nino Rota
Giovanni Rota Rinaldi (3 December 1911 – 10 April 1979), better known as Nino Rota), was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti.
He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli‘s Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola‘s Godfather trilogy, earning the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).
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 operas, five ballets 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 as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.
Film scores
Nino Rota wrote the score for the film The Glass Mountain in 1949. Notable was the singing of Tito Gobbi, one of the world’s greatest baritones. 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:
… 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 sound tracks of a great number of films of the Italian director Federico Fellini covering the period from 1950 to 1979.
Furthermore, one of his compositional habits in particular 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 Dvorák‘s Serenade for Strings in E major as a theme for a character in Fellini’s La Strada.
During the 1940s, Rota composed scores for more than 32 films, including Renato Castellani‘s 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). 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.
The relationship between Fellini and Rota was so strong that even 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.
Rota’s score for Fellini’s 8½ (1963) is often cited as one of the factors which 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 “What Is a Youth?“, part of Rota’s score for Franco Zeffirelli‘s Romeo and Juliet.
The American Film Institute ranked Rota’s score for The Godfather #5 on 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 and thus no longer considered original despite being played differently.
The nomination was then given to the film Sleuth , while Charlie Chaplin and two co-authors for their score featured in Limelight, a 21-year-old film that had just become eligible because it had not been screened in Los Angeles until 1972, went on to win the award. He went on to win an Oscar for his score for The Godfather Part II. His score for War and Peace was also nominated for the list. In all, Rota wrote scores to more than 150 films.
Browse in the Library:
Artist or Composer / Score name | Cover | List of Contents |
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Bach J.S. Cello Suite No. 6 arr. piano solo by Joachim Raff | ||
Bach J.S. Cello Suite No.1 arr. for piano solo | ||
Bach J.S. Das Musikalisches Opfer BWV 1070 | ||
Bach J.S. Fifield Transcription Cantata BWV 147 Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring piano solo | ||
Bach J.S. Harpsichord Concerto A-major arr. 2 pianos | ||
Bach J.S. J.S.- Das Wohltemperierte Klavier I (Urtext) | ||
Bach J.S. Marcello – BWV 974 Concert no. 3 | ||
Bach J.S. My First Book of Bach favorite pieces in easy piano arrangements by D. Dutkanicz | Bach J.S. My First Book of Bach favorite pieces in easy piano arrangements by D. Dutkanicz | |
Bach J.S. Parodi Siciliano from BWV 1031 Piano solo transcription | ||
Bach J.S. Prelude XXIV | ||
Bach J.S. Ricercar 6 BWV 1079 from “The Musical Offering | ||
Bach J.S. Sarabande for cello | ||
Bach J.S. Siciliano from BWV 1031 Piano solo transcription by Eugen D’Albert | ||
Bach J.S. Ten Choral Preludes KiV B 27 | ||
BACH J.S. The Art Of Fugue Bach Fugues For Keyboard, 1715 1750 | ||
BACH J.S. The little music book of Anna Magdalena (20 easy pieces) | ||
Bach J.S. Toccata & Fugue Dminor for Piano | ||
Bach J.S. Two Transcriptions Of St. Matthew Passion For Piano Solo | ||
Bach J.S. Two-Voice Inventions | ||
Bach J.S.-Busoni BVB36 Prelude Fugue and Allegro BWV998 | ||
Bach J.S.-Busoni BWV 933-938 | ||
Bach J.S.-Busoni Prelude in C minor BWV 999 | ||
Bach J.S.-BWV 1055 4 hands | ||
Bach J.S.-Choral-BWV-639-Transcr-Busoni | ||
Bach J.S.-Lipatti – Two Transcriptions of Bach J.S.’s Cantatas 208 | Bach-Lipatti – Two Transcriptions of Bach’s Cantatas 208 | |
Bach J.S.-Petri – Cantata 208 “Sheep May Safely Graze” Piano solo arr. | Bach-Petri – Cantata 208 Sheep May Safely Graze | |
Bach J.S.-Siloti- Andante from Sonata for Solo Violin BWV 1003 | ||
Bach JS “Sheep May Safely Graze” from Cantata 208 (easy piano) | ||
Bach Liszt Prelude & Fugue In A Minor, Bwv 543 | ||
BACH Master Musicians Series by Malcom Boyd (eBook) Biography | ||
Bach Prelude Iv Bwv 849 Wtc I (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach The Goldberg Variations Cambridge Music Handbooks (eBook) | ||
Bach The Goldberg Variations Cambridge Un. Press (Book) | ||
Bach The New Bach Reader A Life Of Johann Sebastian Bach In Letters And Documents (Arthur Mendel Hans T. David Christoph Wolff) Book | ||
Bach Toccata And Fugue In D Minor (Piano Solo) (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor BWV 565 (Piano solo arr.) | ||
Bach Toccata And Fugue In D Minor Bwv 565 (Piano Solo Arr.) (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach Two Part Inventions (No. 1 Bwv 772) (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach-Bauer Die Seele Ruht..Cantata 127 for piano solo | ||
Bach-Busoni – Chaconne D minor arr. piano solo | ||
Bach-Busoni Ich Ruf’ Zu Dir Herr Bwv 639 Piano Solo Arr. (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach-Gouin – Harpsichord Concerto in F Minor (Arioso) BWV1056 piano | ||
Bach-Rummel Ertodt-Uns BWV22 | ||
Bach-Siloti – Praeludium In B Minor BWV 855a | Bach-Siloti – Praeludium In B Minor Bwv 855a | |
Bach-Siloti – Praeludium In B Minor Bwv 855a (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Bach-Siloti Transcription of Bach’s Air from Suite for String Orchestra No.3, BWV 1068 | ||
Bach-Stradal Trio Sonata No 4 in E minor BWV 528 | ||
Bach, Johann Sebastian – Complete Lute Music (transcribed for Guitar) | ||
Bach, J. S. Concert In D Minor Bwv 1043 For Two Violins And Piano Musescore File.mscz | ||
Bach, J.S. Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude Easy Guitar Arr. Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring Cantata Nr. 147 | Bach, J.S. – – Jesu Bleibet Meine Freude Guitar arr. | |
Bach, J.S. Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude Guitar Arr. Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring Cantata Nr. 147 | Bach, J.S. Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude Guitar Arr. Jesu, Joy Of Man’s Desiring Cantata Nr. 147 | |
Bach, J.S. Orchestral Suite No. 1 In C Major Bwv 1066 Passepied (Easy Piano Solo) | ||
Bach, J.S. Arioso For Piano Solo BWV 156 | ||
Bach, J.S. For Electric Guitar [Guitar SongBook] | Bach, J.S. For Electric Guitar | |
Bach, J.S. Myra Hess Chorale from Cantata 147 Jesu Joy Of Man’s desiring Hess Myra piano solo Arrangement | ||
Bach, J.S. – Jesus bleibet meine Freude Guitar arr. Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring Cantata Nr. 147.mscz | ||
Bach, J.S. – Jesus_bleibet_meine_Freude_Cantata_Bwv147_10_Choral SATB with Piano by Johann_Sebastian_Bach.mscz | ||
Bach, J.S. – Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (Piano Solo) | ||
Bach, J.S. Arioso (Guitar) from Cantata BWV 156 Guitar arr. by Per Orlov Kindgren | ||
Bach, J.S. Awake, tu us the Voice is calling – Wachet Auf, ruft uns die Stimme Piano solo arr. (Borwick) | ||
Bach, J.S. Chorale from Cantata 147 Jesu Joy Of Man’s desiring Easy piano solo Arr. | ||
Bach, J.S. Dinu Lipatti Pastorale in F ( Piano solo transcription) | ||
Bach, Johann Sebastian (bio book LUX-Lesebogen) (Deutsch-German) Biography | ||
Bach, JS Partitas Partita 1 | ||
Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier The 48 Preludes and Fugues (Book ) David Ledbetter | ||
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Heitor Villa-Lobos) | ||
Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Heitor Villa-Lobos) 2 pianos | ||
Back To The Future Music from the Motion Picture Soundtrack Piano Vocal guitar | Back To The Future | |
Backstreet Boys – All I Have To Give | ||
Backstreet Boys – As Long As You Love Me | ||
Backstreet Boys – Drowning | ||
Backstreet Boys – How Did I Fall In Love With You | ||
Backstreet Boys – I Need You Tonight | ||
Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way | ||
Backstreet Boys – Incomplete | ||
Backstreet Boys – Quit Playing Games With My Heart | ||
Backstreet Boys – Show Me The Meaning Of Being Lonely | ||
Backstreet Boys As Long As You Love Me | ||
Backstreet Boys Backstreets Back | ||
Backstreet Boys Black Blue | ||
Backstreet Boys Drowning | ||
Backstreet Boys Everybody | ||
Backstreet Boys I Want It That Way | ||
Backstreet Boys Shape Of My Heart | ||
Baden Powell Manha De Carnaval Guitar Tablature Tabs | ||
Baden Powell – So Por Amor (Guitar arr. sheet music with TABs) | Baden Powell – So Por Amor (Guitar arr. sheet music with TABs) | |
Baden Powell – Samba Do Aviao (Jobim) Guitar arr | ||
Baden Powell – Samba Em Preludio Guitar TAB | ||
Baden Powell – Serenata Do Adeus Guitar TABs | ||
Baden Powell Complete Brazil On Guitar transcriptions with Tablature | Baden Powell complete sheet music | |
Baden Powell Contemporary solo guitar (Book In Japanese) | ||
Baden Powell Prelude In A Minor (guitar) | ||
Baden Powell Retrato Brasileiro Choro Lento (Guitar) | ||
Baden Powell Songbook – Volume 1 (Guitar) | Baden Powell 1 | |
Baden Powell Songbook – Volume 2 (Guitar) | Baden Powell 2 | |
Baden Powell Songbook Volume 3 (Guitar) | Baden Powell songbook 3 | |
Badfinger – No Matter What | ||
Baghdarsaryan, Eduard 24 Preludes For Piano | ||
Baker’s Biographical Dictionary Of Popular Musicians 1990 Complete Vol 1 A L and Vol 2 M Z | ||
Balada Para Alessandro (Raul Di Blasio) | ||
Balázs Havasidom Freedom Piano Solo Sheet Music | ||
Ballad No Name (William Joseph) | ||
Ballade No. 1 In G Minor (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Ballads Big Book Of Ballads 2nd Edition Piano Vocal Guitar | Ballads Big Book Of Ballads 2nd Edition Piano Vocal Guitar | |
Ballads For Classical Guitar | Ballads For Classical Guitar | |
Ballads Really easy piano (24 great songs) | Ballads Really easy piano (24 great songs) | |
Ballads The Big Book Of Ballads 3rd Edition Piano Vocal Guitar | Ballads The Big Book Of Ballads 3rd Edition Piano Vocal Guitar | |
Bambina (Lara Fabian) | ||
Banana Boat Day-O – Guitarr Arr. With Tabs (Traditional Jamaican Folk Song (Sheet Music) | ||
Banana Boat Day-O – Guitarr Arr. With Tabs (Traditional Jamaican Folk Song (Sheet Music)) (Musescore File).mscz | ||
Banana phone (Raffi) | ||
Bangles – Eternal Flame | ||
Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 1 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 1 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | |
Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 2 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 2 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | |
Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 3 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 3 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | |
Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 4 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano Susi’s – Band 4 – Swing Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | |
Bar Piano Susi’s Merry Christmas by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano Susi’s Merry Christmas by Susi Weiss | |
Bar Piano, Susi’s – Band 5 – Swing, Evergreens and Pop Classics by Susi Weiss | Bar Piano, Susi’s – Band 5 – Swing, Evergreens and Pop Classics | |
Barbara Livre D’or 18 Chansons Partition Musicale | Barbara Livre D’or 18 Chansons Partition Musicale | |
Barbara Arens Moonbeams |