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| Menken |
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: (Alan Menken) The 1831
Victor Hugo novel on which several film versions of
The Hunchback of
Notre Dame have been based was not a likely candidate for Disney to
adapt into an animated children's musical, but the studio managed to
twist around the story enough to make it work. Unfortunately, in the
process of doing so, many of the more interesting aspects of the
convoluted love story, along with its inevitable tragedy, were
sacrificed for the sake of targeting young audiences. The basics are all
there, with Quasimodo, the badly deformed bell-ringer of Paris' Notre
Dame cathedral caught in an identity crisis that's complicated by the
emergence of a gypsy named Esmeralda, and his begrudging caretaker (of
sorts), Judge Claude Frollo. Also in the mix is the conflicted captain
of Frollo's guards, Phoebus. All are smitten with Esmeralda, which
presents a particularly interesting problem for the pious Frollo, an
aspect of the story that's been retained for mostly the adult audience.
Like many before it,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, along with its
songs and score, stirred up a flourish of anger in certain American
communities. Religious conservatives, an embarrassingly growing force in
American politics in the 1990's, boycotted this film because of the song
"Hellfire," a suggestive rejection of purity by Frollo amplified by
imagery of a half-naked Esmeralda dancing in a fire. A few months after
that, a group of Baptist organizations went a step further and boycotted
Disney altogether, partly due to the controversy of
The Hunchback
of Notre Dame and partly because Disney World announced its support
for gay rights. On the flip side, overly sensitive left-wing liberals
who claimed to fight for the rights of the handicapped also boycotted
the film and its soundtrack, rejecting the term "hunchback," which, in
the newly politically correct environment of the 1990's, was deemed
inappropriate. It's hard to imagine what Hugo would have thought of not
only this musical but also the morons who protested it. Alan Menken's
songs and scores were similarly met with controversy, but luckily the
complaints regarding the music were better grounded in reasons of
quality.
The film turned out to be final entry in Disney's
successful string of musicals in collaboration with composer Alan
Menken, with whom the studio had reinvented the genre with
The Little
Mermaid. Each successive film and soundtrack since
Beauty and the
Beast had been slightly less attractive, and
The Hunchback of
Notre Dame is arguably the final impressive achievement by Menken
before his work for
Hercules the following year would wipe him
off the Disney map until 2004's
Home on the Range. This entry
also represented the end of the line for Menken's unparalleled string of
Oscar wins. While nominated for its score,
The Hunchback of Notre
Dame was upset by Rachel Portman's undeserving
Emma, a
disappointment despite the problems that Menken's score suffers. After
such grand success with his previous Disney collaborations, Menken, much
like Quasi, was suddenly becoming an outcast. Despite a few intentional
breaks for comedy numbers, the constantly frightening Latin chants and a
heavy string, timpani, and choral bass managed to scare many children
(and parents, for that matter) right out of the theatre. This move
alone, however, was not what sunk the film and its album in the end. Had
Disney and Menken decided to be true to the dark nature of the story,
the film could have been a brilliant adult feature, embracing the
"Hellfire" and "Sanctuary!" elements of the soundtrack and letting loose
with a truly interesting result. Unfortunately, a spattering of comedy
pieces, with the usual talking inanimate objects leading the way, lead
to the three incongruent, silly songs that ultimately cause the film and
album to be only a mixed bag. Working against them are the serious,
dramatically brilliant pieces that resemble some of Menken's very best
work. Among Menken's best songs of introduction is "The Bells of Notre
Dame," establishing the rich combination of chimes, organ, and choir
that define the score in elegantly harmonic tones under the pleasant
narrative voice of Paul Kandel. Also impressive is David Ogden Stiers as
the Archdeacon; the actor was a featured performer in both
Beauty and
the Beast (Cogsworth/Narrator) and
Pocahontas (Ratcliffe).
Also introduced is Tony Jay, whose dominating and gritty performance as
Frollo has always been heralded as one of the film's greatest
strengths.
The most aspirational and ultimately positive aspect of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the character song "Out There" opens
with a frighteningly sinister conversational interaction between Frollo
and Quasimodo before the latter performs his compelling cry for identity
with flourishing and redemptive orchestral accompaniment. Tom Hulce's
voice, especially compared to Jay, is appropriately light. Technically
the primary song is "God Help the Outcasts," performed elegantly by
Heidi Mollenhauer since apparently Demi Moore couldn't sing well enough
to suffice. A truly lovely and inspirational piece, this song is
reprised by Bette Midler for the pop song rendition over the end
credits. Somewhat of a reprise of "Out There" is "Heaven's Light,"
giving Hulce another opportunity to sing to all of Paris in optimistic
tones. Conversely, the darkest depths of
The Hunchback of Notre
Dame exist in "Hellfire," one of the most stunning visual and aural
combinations in animation history. A Latin mass leads into Jay's
hauntingly deep performance of Frollo's torment, producing a song so
overwhelmingly compelling in an evil sense that it alone was worth the
cost of admission and the album. The instrumental accompaniment to
"Hellfire" informs much of the score that chronologically follows in the
film. Unfortunately, the three lighter songs are a significant detriment
to the gains of the aforementioned melodies and performances. The gypsy
song, "Topsy Turvy," is a carnival-like, French-styled piece for the
Feast of Fools; the static pounding of the title lyric is extremely
irritating. The three talking gargoyles perform a slight jazz comfort
song in "A Guy Like You" that uses, like "Topsy Turvy," the Broadway
line-dancing technique of stopping the song and then progressing its
bloated performance from a standstill to proper tempo. This technique
was fine in "Be Our Guest" during
Beauty and the Beast, but with
two usages in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame, it became predictable
and tiresome. Also breaking the spirit of the film's larger tone is "The
Court of Miracles," a jaunty and short, gypsy-styled piece meant to
extend the narrative rather than establish another primary theme. The
film ends with a reprise of "The Bells of Notre Dame" in glorious
fashion, taking Menken's standard choral finale format and extending it
to strikingly overblown levels, with even pounding timpani and a false
ending for good measure.
The score for
The Hunchback of Notre Dame offers
numerous dark and menacing passages, with lengthy sequences of adult
choral chanting distinguishing itself from Menken's usual, light-hearted
tones for the genre. The employment of the songs' melodies in the score
cues isn't as well integrated as it is in, for instance,
Beauty and
the Beast, but it suffices. The high-pitch choral sound of "The
Bells of Notre Dame" and "Topsy Turvy" merge with fragments of the
Quasimodo half of "Out There" for a disillusioning "Humiliation" cue.
The gorgeous highlight of the score is "The Bell Tower," which explores
lovely incarnations of the theme for "God Help the Outcasts" with a full
choral performance of "Out There" at 1:20. Both "Paris Burning" and
"Sanctuary!" explicitly continue the instrumental backdrop and Latin
chanting of "Hellfire," a sound that becomes more general in "And He
Shall Smite the Wicked." The immense sound of these three cues is
remarkable for Menken, but the tolling chimes, relentless organ, and
forceful Latin chants are often presented in unison, which could cause
you a headache if you're not prepared for their sheer volume. "Into the
Light" concludes the score with a final choral reprise of the melody
from "Out There." Menken's ability to generate chanting ruckus isn't as
accomplished as that of major, dramatic composers of the time, and a
lack of sincerity of depth in the recording of these sequences remains
an issue. On the whole, Menken's magical touch continues to show itself
at points in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The vocal cast was very
well selected (except for Moore) and is a pleasure to hear in every
song. Stephen Schwartz's lyrics are sharper than Howard Ashman's were,
with an erudite vocabulary in especially the Follo lines. Fascinatingly,
many of the detriments of the film's soundtrack were corrected by Menken
and Schwartz when they assembled the score for the German stage
production of the musical in the late 1990's, refined even further for
an English version of the play in the 2010's. Those listeners who
appreciated the grace of "The Bells of Notre Dame," the beauty of "God
Help the Outcasts," and the menace of "Hellfire" on the 1996 soundtrack
were treated to beefier versions, albeit altered in story a bit, in the
two musical recordings. The English-language variant is especially
magnificent in the choral power of its recording (overcoming a lesser
orchestral size), the play's "Entr'acte" a remarkable expansion of
Menken's base material.
More importantly, the stage version of
The Hunchback
of Notre Dame restored additional songs that Menken and Schwartz had
originally written for the film but were axed in part because of studio
demands. (These are joined by a few other fresh songs that are
surprisingly good.) The duo of "In a Place of Miracles" and "Someday"
greatly expand the singing role for Esmeralda and offer her and Phoebus
a love song, and the elimination of the ridiculous comedy song "A Guy
Like You," among other solid changes, brought new life to the
soundtrack. Many fans weren't aware that Mollenhauer did actually record
varying finished renderings of these additional two songs, especially
"Someday," which remained on the original 1996 soundtrack as a bonus pop
song. A portion of this song did end up preceding "God Help the
Outcasts" with altered lyrics. The situation is reminiscent of the
additional recordings made by Bruce Adler and Jonathan Freeman for
Aladdin that really should have made that film as well. In 2021,
Disney finally included the original
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
in its "Legacy Collection" of expanded albums, and these Mollenhauer
performances are included amongst the demos of Menken and Schwartz
performing early versions of the songs. The gem of the set is the
orchestrally-backed "Someday" song, one of Menken's more pronounced
songs of aspiration. Otherwise, the demos are of the quality and level
of interest familiar to those who have long owned the 1994 "Music Behind
the Magic" collection filled with such work in progress for the classic
Menken trilogy. Most intriguing here is that the "Hellfire" song
originally featured an entirely different and far more aggressive, less
fluid section for the song's title lyric. The 2021 album also included a
pair of remastered tracks from the German musical recording. While worth
the improved quality more than the English-language stage recording, the
latter remains superior. Also included on the "Legacy Collection," of
course, is an extra half hour of score music from Menken, though a
surprising amount of this newly released material, such as "The
Cathedral" and "Escape" is more incidental than one might imagine,
offering subtle renditions of the song melodies in lighter shades. One
notable exception is "The Pillory," which emphasizes action material
both dramatic and comedic. The longer version of "And He Shall Smite the
Wicked," extending the tone of "Find the Girl," contains additional
choral chanting that the score's enthusiasts won't want to miss.
Unfortunately, the 2021 "Legacy Collection" is better
known as one of Disney's worst soundtrack offerings of all time, a
product of haphazard and inexplicable editing errors. On rare occasions,
listeners are left wondering if a rough edit of an album's master was
accidentally approved and released, and this expansion of
The
Hunchback of Notre Dame begs such questions. These issues go well
beyond the absence of the source applications of the tower bells and
church choir that bleed into the score. Rather, the mix contains poor
fades and sometimes drops a channel or two without reason. The crossfade
between "Morning in the Bell Tower" and "Out There" is really poor,
ruining the start of the latter track. As "Out There" shifts to Jay's
performance at 1:39, there's a hiccup that suggests a poor splice. The
strings at 2:22 into "The Pillory" suddenly drop to a lower volume. Room
noise on the recording isn't removed from "Humiliation." A number of
awkward splices in "The Cathedral" needed better integration, and for
three seconds at 1:47, the left channel distractingly disappears several
times. The start of the instrumental "Escape" actually begins in the
final second of the preceding track, "A Guy Like You." The most
unacceptable error is two minutes of material missing from "And He Shall
Smite the Wicked" that was previously heard on the 1996 album. One must
wonder if this music was dropped because of the desire to fit the track
on the first of the two CDs in the physical release. The closing fanfare
of "The Bells of Notre Dame (Reprise)" is a bit more abrasive in its mix
than on the original soundtrack album. Overall, the 2021 album offers
several benefits but needed far more care in its assembly to suffice in
this series of premium Disney products. Fans are left to combine
portions of the original and expanded albums and conduct their own
micro-edits of the expanded presentation to remove or replace
distracting artifacts. When Disney delayed the CD version of this 2021
album for several weeks, fans were hopeful that these errors, which were
clearly evident on the already-released digital version, would be
rectified. That was not the case, so approach either option with
skepticism. (The CD was not retailed widely even after its release.) As
for the music itself, it's a step behind
Pocahontas, and the
indecision about the film and score's final attitude towards the story
leaves it even further below Menken's Academy Award winning efforts. A
disaster was awaiting the franchise the next year, with the overemphasis
on the comical routine producing a wretched and embarrassing sound for
Hercules. At least Menken went out with one really noisy,
liturgical bang.
@Amazon.com: CD or
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- Music as Written for the Film: ****
- Music as Heard on the 1996 Album: ***
- Music as Heard on the 2021 Album: **
- Overall: ***
| Bias Check: |
For Alan Menken reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.71
(in 17 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.47
(in 59,664 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
|
The insert of the 1996 album contains extensive lyrics and credits but no extra information about
the music or the film. The integral booklet of the 2021 album's packaging offers notes from the composer,
lyricist, and producer, along with a list of performers, lyrics, and extensive production photography.
