"Nino Rota" has been added to your list of bookmarked artists
close
Nino Rota
December 3, 1911 - April 10, 1979
born in Milan, Italy, composed during the Modern period
Biography
Like many fine concert music composers, such as Serge Prokofiev, Toru Takemitsu, and Bernard Herrmann, Rota created a unique film soundtrack style for which he became known worldwide.

Rota was born into a musical family: one of his grandfathers was the pianist-composer Giovanni Rinaldi (1840-1895), and he studied the piano, on which he was to become known as a gifted improviser, with his mother. He also studied solfège and began to compose at the early age of eight. His oratorio L'infanzia di S. Giovanni Battista (The Infancy of Saint John the Baptist) for soloists, chorus, and orchestra was performed in Milan and Lille in 1923, when he was only 12.

Rota entered the Milan Conservatory in 1923 and wrote his (unperformed) first opera Il principe porcaro in 1925, basing his original libretto on Hans Christian Andersen's tale. About this time he established a lifelong friendship with Igor Stravinsky. He studied privately with Pizzetti and Casella, and received his diploma at the Accademia di S. Cecilia in Rome in 1930. In the U.S., he studied at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia from 1931-32, and received an arts degree at Milan University (1937). During this time he composed several minor chamber works.