ABSTRACT
Becce’s compositional approach to sound-film scoring was strongly informed by his earlier work for ‘silent’ films. He repeatedly reverted to the compilation practice, working with specific film-musical topoi across genres and times. Becce’s intertemporal use of existing compositions also reveals the emergence of genre-specific musical conventions, such as those evoked by the routine narrative strategies of German-language Heimat and mountain films—while a collective idea of Heimat was audio-visually shaped. His approach is the result of the idea of recyclable film music that can be traced to his Kinothek series (1919–1929). Although Becce is recognized internationally as one of the most influential and prolific German composers for film, few studies deal with his work for sound films in detail and draw extensively on primary sources, as this chapter attempts to do.
