René Giessen (born 24 December 1944,

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...

) is a German musician, composer and conductor. Giessen is widely known for playing the harmonica in various cover-versions of the title melody of famous German

Winnetou Winnetou is a fictional Native American hero of several novels written in German by Karl May (1842–1912), one of the best-selling German writers of all time with about 200 million copies worldwide, including the ''Winnetou'' trilogy. The ch ...

-movies from the 1960s starring Pierre Brice and

Lex Barker Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. (May 8, 1919 – May 11, 1973), known as Lex Barker, was an American actor. He was known for playing Tarzan for RKO Pictures between 1949 and 1953, and portraying leading characters from Karl May's novels, notably a ...

. This melody was composed by German composer

Martin Böttcher Martin Böttcher (17 June 1927 – 20 April 2019) was a German composer, arranger and conductor. The beginning Böttcher (on foreign records and articles often written "Bottcher" or "Boettcher", the latter being the correct transliteration of th ...

and originally was played by Johnny Müller. At the time the original themes from the Karl May movies were published they held top positions in the German charts and can be considered a landmark in German film music history. The success of these movies originated a whole new genre later known as the "

Spaghetti Westerns The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most of ...

" where once again the harmonica plays a dominant role (there is even a character by the name of Harmonica in Sergio Leone's movie ''

Once Upon a Time in the West ''Once Upon a Time in the West'' ( , "Once upon a time (there was) the West") is a 1968 epic Spaghetti Western film directed by Sergio Leone, who co-wrote it with Sergio Donati based on a story by Dario Argento, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Leone ...

'') in the music of Ennio Morricone, played on the harmonica by Franco De Gemini.

External pages

Rene Giessen Homepage
1944 births Living people German composers {{Germany-composer-stub