Archive
Remembering Carmine Coppola, 1910-1991
Composer, conductor and flautist Carmine Coppola died ten years ago today in Los Angeles on April 26, 1991, at the age of 80, after suffering a stroke.
Although much of his film career was closely connected with his son, director Francis Ford Coppola, he created memorable music for some of the defining American films of the 1970s and 1980s, including The Godfather Part II, Apocalypse Now, The Black Stallion and The Godfather Part III. His work brought him an Academy Award and a Golden Globe.
Carmine Valentino Coppola was born in New York City on June 11, 1910, into an Italian-American family. He studied flute and composition at the Juilliard School and Manhattan School of Music and became an accomplished professional flautist. He performed under Arturo Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra before increasingly turning to composition, arranging and conducting.
Coppola’s connection with cinema became significant when Francis asked him to contribute music to The Godfather (1972). Nino Rota wrote the principal score, but Carmine supplied additional music, including material heard during the Corleone wedding festivities. The collaboration continued more substantially on The Godfather Part II (1974), where Coppola contributed original material alongside Rota’s themes, including music associated with the film’s early twentieth-century American sequences. Rota and Coppola shared the Academy Award for Best Original Dramatic Score, giving Carmine his greatest professional honor. Read more…
Shop at the Movie Music UK Store
Member of the
MOVIE MUSIC UK 