Know The Score: Rachel Zef­fi­ra on The Godfather

Although they nev­er met, Rachel Zef­fi­ra regards Ital­ian com­pos­er Nino Rota as a ​“true men­tor”. One half of the exper­i­men­tal pop duo Cat’s Eyes and a tal­ent­ed sopra­no in her own right, she speaks of the late musi­cian with an intense pas­sion, and even helped to cre­ate a com­pi­la­tion album in 2007, ​‘The Sacred Heart of Nino Rota’, cel­e­brat­ing some of his rarest works.

“He’s my guardian angel,” Zef­fi­ra enthus­es, ​“I feel so pro­tec­tive of him; like he’s my dad or some­thing. He was a true eccen­tric, who would make music in chaot­ic sit­u­a­tions and had an apart­ment filled with trea­sures that lit­er­al­ly reached the ceil­ing, and that’s exact­ly how I am, too. He always cre­at­ed arrange­ments direct­ly from the heart, even if that wasn’t the trendy thing to do. He wrote with sin­cer­i­ty, sim­plic­i­ty and pre­ci­sion, and that’s why his music hasn’t aged.”

Hav­ing worked with leg­endary direc­tors such as Fed­eri­co Felli­ni (who described Rota as ​“some­one who had a rare qual­i­ty belong­ing to the world of intu­ition”) and Luchi­no Vis­con­ti, Rota amassed an envi­able body of work in his life­time, scor­ing more than 150 films. Yet none of his scores have endured quite like the one he wrote for Fran­cis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather.

The way the cen­tral theme shifts between heart­felt nos­tal­gia and morose still­ness per­fect­ly reflects the dual­i­ty of gang­ster life, where you can be smil­ing at your daughter’s wed­ding one minute and bru­tal­ly shot clutch­ing a blood­ied bag of oranges the next. Indeed, Zef­fi­ra insists it’s just as much a love let­ter to Ital­ian fam­i­ly val­ues as it is the old-school ele­gance of the crim­i­nal underworld.

“The God­fa­ther cre­ates mixed feel­ings for Ital­ians,” she explains, ​“as the mafia thing often gets dis­tort­ed and turned into some­thing ugly. But Rota focus­es on the heart and soul of the fam­i­ly spir­it that dri­ves Ital­ian cul­ture. He always said music was a vehi­cle for the soul and the sec­ond you hear that trum­pet solo, you just know what he’s try­ing to do.”

Zef­fi­ra par­tic­u­lar­ly likes how Rota varies the cen­tral theme through­out the film. ​“It goes from tra­di­tion­al folk, with the accor­dion and man­dolin, through to more jazz-like impro­vi­sa­tion. He’s con­stant­ly play­ing new ver­sions of the theme, bring­ing in an oboe instead of a trum­pet or tak­ing the same notes and slight­ly twist­ing them around. I think he’s telling the his­to­ry of Italy’s musi­cal jour­ney and show­ing how mul­ti-faceted its peo­ple are. The score goes from sound­ing mourn­ful to full of light and love – and that’s inten­tion­al. It shows how unpre­dictable life must have been for Ital­ian immi­grants at that time.”

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Rota, the expe­ri­ence of work­ing on The God­fa­ther was ulti­mate­ly a painful one. He was nom­i­nat­ed for an Oscar in 1973, but this was with­drawn after pro­duc­er Dino De Lau­ren­ti­is accused Rota of pla­gia­rism. In fact, ​‘Love Theme’ was a vari­a­tion of a far jaun­tier, much duller, march­ing band piece which Rota had writ­ten for the 1958 Ital­ian com­e­dy For­tunel­la. How­ev­er, because com­posers can’t pla­gia­rise their own work, Rota was ful­ly vin­di­cat­ed and won an Oscar for his The God­fa­ther: Part II score two years later.

As part of Cat’s Eyes, along­side The Hor­rors’ Faris Bad­wan, Zef­fi­ra cre­at­ed the music for Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Bur­gundy in 2014. It’s a film all about the intri­ca­cies of a rela­tion­ship and how sadism can be just as impor­tant as gen­tle­ness when it comes to keep­ing a rela­tion­ship fruit­ful, and its shifts in tone sug­gest Zef­fi­ra enjoys dark­ness just as much as light.

“Just like Rota’s work, we want­ed to real­ly get into the heart of the char­ac­ters,” she explains. ​“There’s grief and pain in their rela­tion­ship, and one of the char­ac­ters has more love in her heart than the oth­er. Those shifts in tone were what I learned from Rota and The God­fa­ther. What was so nice about work­ing with Peter is he gave us com­plete free­dom to shape his film. I sense Felli­ni and Rota had the same kind of rela­tion­ship. The best scores are cre­at­ed from a place of pure trust.”

Zef­fi­ra per­formed in the Vat­i­can for a spe­cial set with Cat’s Eyes back in 2011 – a rare hon­our, but one total­ly befit­ting of the ethe­re­al beau­ty of the group’s sound. And she says she even felt Rota’s spir­it guid­ing her while she played at St Peter’s Basil­i­ca. ​“He had a weird rela­tion­ship with Catholi­cism, and he def­i­nite­ly cap­tured the pow­er and intim­i­da­tion of the Church with his God­fa­ther music. You see this with things like him using a full organ sound, and not just one lit­tle baroque organ. When you walk into the Vat­i­can, you realise how small you are in com­par­i­son, and while we were play­ing I could feel Rota’s energy.”