for french actor see Hugo Becker

Hugo Becker (actor)

Hugo Becker is a French movies and television actor. He is known on his role as Prince Louis Grimaldi in the television adaption of Gossip Girl aired on the CW Television Network.-Career:...

Hugo Becker (born Jean Otto Eric Hugo Becker) (February 13, 1863 – July 30, 1941) was a prominent German

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 cellist, cello

Cello

The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...

 teacher, and composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

. He studied at a young age with Alfredo Piatti, and later Friedrich Grützmacher

Friedrich Grützmacher

Friedrich Wilhelm Grützmacher was a noted German cellist in the second half of the 19th century.Grützmacher was born in Dessau, Anhalt, and was first taught by his father...

 in Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

.

He was born in 1863 in Strasbourg

Strasbourg

Strasbourg is the capital and principal city of the Alsace region in eastern France and is the official seat of the European Parliament. Located close to the border with Germany, it is the capital of the Bas-Rhin département. The city and the region of Alsace are historically German-speaking,...

; his father Jean Becker

Jean Becker (violinist)

Jean Becker was a prominent German violinist from Mannheim in the Grand Duchy of Baden.-Biography:He studied with Aloys Kettenus and Vincenz Lachner. After a short period as a conductor at Mannheim, he entered upon a series of concert tours...

 was a famous violin

Violin

The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....

ist. His father tried teaching him violin at the age of six, but the young Becker loved cello, and switched over at the age of nine. By age fifteen he was touring with a string quartet

String quartet

A string quartet is a musical ensemble of four string players – usually two violin players, a violist and a cellist – or a piece written to be performed by such a group...

 made up of him, his father, sister, and brother. He had also become a leading cellist in the court orchestra in Mannheim

Mannheim

Mannheim is a city in southwestern Germany. With about 315,000 inhabitants, Mannheim is the second-largest city in the Bundesland of Baden-Württemberg, following the capital city of Stuttgart....

.

In 1884, Becker was appointed solo cellist with the Frankfurt Opera Orchestra, and the following year became the leading cello teacher at the Frankfurt

Frankfurt

Frankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...

 Hoch Conservatory

Hoch Conservatory

Dr. Hoch’s Konservatorium - Musikakademie was founded in Frankfurt am Main on September 22, 1878. Through the generosity of Frankfurter Joseph Hoch, who bequeathed the Conservatory one million German gold marks in his testament, a school for music and the arts was established for all age groups. ...

. From 1909 to 1929, he was professor of cello at the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

; among his students was George Georgescu

George Georgescu

George Georgescu was a Romanian conductor. The moving force behind the Bucharest Philharmonic Orchestra for decades beginning shortly after World War I, a protégé of Artur Nikisch and a close associate of George Enescu, he received honors from the French and communist Romanian governments and...

, who would replace him as cellist in the Marteau

Henri Marteau

Henri Marteau was a French violinist and composer.-Life and career:He was born in Reims, France. He was of German-French mixture. His father was a well known amateur violinist of that city, and took a great interest in musical affairs. His mother was an excellent pianist, who had studied under...

 Quartet before forsaking the cello for the conductor's podium on account of a hand injury. Later, Georgescu would remark, "All I know, I learned from Hugo Becker."

During this time Becker also toured extensively and played chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 with Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe

Eugène Ysaÿe was a Belgian violinist, composer and conductor born in Liège. He was regarded as "The King of the Violin", or, as Nathan Milstein put it, the "tzar"...

 and Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

 in a piano trio

Piano trio

A piano trio is a group of piano and two other instruments, usually a violin and a cello, or a piece of music written for such a group. It is one of the most common forms found in classical chamber music...

., and later with Artur Schnabel

Artur Schnabel

Artur Schnabel was an Austrian classical pianist, who also composed and taught. Schnabel was known for his intellectual seriousness as a musician, avoiding pure technical bravura...

 and Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch

Carl Flesch was a violinist and teacher.Carl Flesch was born in Moson in Hungary in 1873. He began playing the violin at seven years of age. At 10, he was taken to Vienna, and began to study with Jakob Grün. At 17, he left for Paris, and joined the Paris Conservatoire...

 as the third Schnabel Trio between 1914-21.

He owned two Strads

Stradivarius

The name Stradivarius is associated with violins built by members of the Stradivari family, particularly Antonio Stradivari. According to their reputation, the quality of their sound has defied attempts to explain or reproduce, though this belief is controversial...

: the 1720 Cristiani and another one built in 1719 now known as the Becker.

Selected works

• Andante religioso
• Three Pieces for Cello with Piano Accompaniment
• Scènes d'amour, duo
• Deux Morceaux: Romance, Duo
• Deux Morceaux: Valse gracieuse, Duo
• Cello Concerto, Op.10 in A major (published by Schott in parts in 1902, piano/cello version ca.1896, in score in 1904)
• Aus dem Leben des Waldschrat, suite
• Mechanik und Ästhetik des Violoncellospiels

Sources

• Allmusic
• Sadie, S. (ed.) (1980) The New Grove Dictionary of Music & Musicians, [vol. # 2].