Nino Rota, born in Milan in 1911 and died in Rome in 1979 was a world-renowned Italian composer 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, receiving for the latter the Academy Award for Best original Score in 1974. During his long career Rota wrote more than 150 scores 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 and Zeffirelli as well as maintaining a long teaching career at the Liceo Musicale in Bari, Italy, where he was the director for almost 30 years.

It has been successfully argued many times that no film has had as much impact on cinema as Francis Ford Coppola's original The Godfather, adaptation of Mario Puzo's best selling and controvertial novel. The 1972 powerhouse not only defined the entire subsequent genre of mob-related films, but remains a brutally memorable exhibit of dramatic storytelling at its most compelling. The story of the now famous trilogy of films follows the progression of the original New York mafia families in their efforts to survive and adapt in the times from the 1900's to the 1990's. The trilogy ultimately defines itself as the story of Michael Corleone, desperate to retain the Sicilian traditions of his father while moving the family forward into these new, more global avenues of wealth. His ultimate failure, foreshadowed in his ascension in The Godfather and progressively more shocking in the endings of the two sequels, guides the music of these films to a similarly depressing end. Like the films, the work of Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola for the soundtracks of these productions is engrained in the memory of the mainstream, defining the sound of mafia music much like the characters influenced later incarnations of essentially the same idea. If you boil down the plot elements of The Godfather to their most basic ingredients, they would be tradition, love, and fear. Rota's score for the film perfectly embodies these three aspects of the story, licensing ten or so existing pieces for source usage. Carmine Coppola, the director's father, wrote a small amount of original source material for The Godfather, increasing his efforts in this regard as the trilogy progressed.