Giuseppe Becce

Giuseppe Becce (born February 3 1877 in Lonigo/Vicenza, Italy; died October 5 1973 in Berlin) was an Italian-born film score composer.

Becce showed his musical talents early and was already the director of the student musical orchestra at the Padua University. In 1906 he moved to Germany and studied musical composition with Arthur Nikisch and Ferruccio Busoni. In the 1913 silent movie "Richard Wagner" that was directed by Carl Froelich, Becce played the title role and wrote the accompanying music. He continued to write such music for a series of subsequent movies. A collection of these pieces, the so-called "de:Kinothek" were published between 1919 and 1933 by the Verlag Schlesinger'sche Buchhandlung in Berlin.

Between 1915 to 1923 Becce was the director of the little orchestra of the Berlin Mozartsaals am Nollendorfplatz. After WWII he was named to run the music department of the Decla-Bioscop AG and chief director of its movie orchestra, later to became the UFA- orchestra. He also worked at major movie theatres as director of the orchestras, among them the UFA-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz, the Tauentzien-Palast, and the de:Gloria-Palast. In this position he worked with the famous directors of the German silent movie era, namely Fritz Lang, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Ernst Lubitsch, Ludwig Berger, Joe May and Berthold Viertel; he arranged and composed music for their movies. In 1920 Becce published the magazineFilm-Ton-Kunst.^[1] In 1927 he published, together with de:Hans Erdmann and de:Ludwig Brav the Allgemeines Handbuch der Filmmusik; it was based among others on his Kinothek and enabled the pianist of silent movies to accompany movies with generalized intonations and motives of renouned composers.

With the arrival of sound movies Becce worked on musical movies and movies covering opera or operetta themes. He worked with Leni Riefenstahl as well as with Luis Trenker whose mountain films he intonated. His work during the next three decades was very productive, and he commonly mixed his own compositions with creations of other composers.

Becce is buried in the cemetary of Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Berliner Straße.

• 1913 Richard Wagner. Director: Carl Froelich
• 1921 Hamlet. Director: Svend Gade
• 1921 Scherben. Director: Lupu Pick
• 1921 Der müde Tod. Director: Fritz Lang
• 1923 Der steinerne Reiter. Director: Fritz Wendhausen
• 1924 Der letzte Mann. Director: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• 1926 Tartüff. Director: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
• 1926 Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheines. Director: Berthold Viertel
• 1926 Geheimnisse einer Seele. Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
• 1927 Am Rande der Welt. Director: Karl Grune
• 1929 Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt. Director: Curtis Bernhardt
• 1930 Skandal um Eva. Director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst
• 1931 Berge in Flammen. Director: Karl Hartl, Luis Trenker
• 1931 Zweierlei Moral. Director: Gerhard Lamprecht
• 1932 Razzia in St. Pauli. Director: Werner Hochbaum
• 1932 Das Blaue Licht. Director: Leni Riefenstahl
• 1933 Ekstase Director: Gustav Machaty
• 1934 Der ewige Traum. Director: Arnold Fanck
• 1934 Der verlorene Sohn. Director: Luis Trenker
• 1938 Der Berg ruft. Director: Luis Trenker
• 1941 Viel Lärm um Nixi. Director: Erich Engel

• Hans Erdmann, Giuseppe Becce, Ludwig Brav: Allgemeines Handbuch der Film-Musik. Schlesinger'sche Buchh., Berlin-Licherfelde 1927.

• Film-Ton-Kunst. Eine Zeitschrift für die künstlerische Musikillustration des Lichtbildes. Gegr. v. G. Becce. Schlesinger'sche Buchhandlung, Berlin 1.1920-6.1927.

• Deutsches Filminstitut
• Cyranos Biography in German
• Biographie (German)