The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Music in which Latin chant and cathedral bells light up, all at once, one man's loneliness and another man's hypocrisy.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
The people behind it ⏳🌊
- ComposerAlan Menken
He built the score of the entire film as the sound of a cathedral, layering chorus, bells and organ.
- LyricsStephen Schwartz
Joining Menken for a second time after “Pocahontas,” he wrote lyrics that grapple with faith and hypocrisy.
- DirectorsGary Trousdale·Kirk Wise
The co-directing duo behind “Beauty and the Beast,” they pushed through a structure that packs the entire prologue into a single song.
- ProducerDon Hahn
Following “Beauty and the Beast” and “The Lion King,” he took on the production of this film.
- Lead castTom Hulce
He voiced Quasimodo and sang the songs himself.
- Lead castTony Jay
He played Frollo in a deep bass voice and sang “Hellfire.”
I. Carrying a cathedral into song
(Origins) Disney's animated feature “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” is based on “Notre-Dame de Paris,” the novel Victor Hugo published in 1831. David Stainton, a Disney development executive, pitched the project in 1993. Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, who had made “Beauty and the Beast,” reunited as co-directors, and Don Hahn produced. (The composer) The music was written by Alan Menken, a composer who began with the off-Broadway musical “Little Shop of Horrors” and went on to lead the revival of Disney's animated musicals with “The Little Mermaid,” “Beauty and the Beast,” and “Aladdin.” He knew how to carry both a character's circumstances and the unfolding of a scene within a single song. The lyrics were by Stephen Schwartz, who wrote “Godspell” and “Pippin.” The two had first worked together a year earlier on “Pocahontas,” and this film was their second collaboration. (Weight) The source is a novel that ends in tragedy. The filmmakers reworked the plot for a family audience but left the book's themes intact: religious hypocrisy, the persecution of outsiders, repressed desire. Menken rendered that weight in the sound of a cathedral. Over a large orchestra he layered choir, pipe organ, and bells, and let a chorus singing Latin liturgical texts envelop the whole film. (Reception) The score was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Musical·Comedy Score and for the Golden Globe for Best Original Score. Today it is often counted the most ambitious score among Disney's musicals. Like “Moulin Rouge!,” covered earlier in this series, it sets the people on the margins of Paris to song, but the place this film borrows its sound from is not the cabaret but the medieval cathedral.
II. The story the bells tell
(Frame) The film opens with the clown Clopin staging a puppet show for a group of children and telling them an old tale. The setting is Paris in 1482. As the morning bells ring, Clopin begins the story of the bell-ringer who lives in the cathedral tower. (Prologue) The tale he tells goes like this. One night years before, a band of Gypsies slipping into Paris by boat is caught by Judge Frollo. A woman fleeing with a baby in her arms dies on the cathedral steps. Frollo is about to drop the deformed infant down a well when the Archdeacon stops him. Beneath the gaze of the statue of the Virgin, he agrees to take the child in and raise him hidden in the bell tower. The child is given the name Quasimodo, meaning “half-formed.” (Structure) All of this happens within a single song. “The Bells of Notre Dame” is a storyteller's song and chase music, a liturgical chant and a dialogue in which judgment and conscience collide. All of it is stitched together in a little over 6 minutes. A Latin chorus sweeps over the scenes, alternating between a prayer for mercy and a medieval chant of the day of judgment. Where Frollo confronts the Archdeacon, bells and chorus crash in all at once. (Question) At the end, the song poses a riddle to its listeners. Who is the monster and who is the man? This question becomes the axis that runs to the very end of the film. The screen shows the sun rising over the cathedral, and with the question left unanswered, the main story begins.
The whole prologue, from the clown Clopin opening his tale to Frollo and the Archdeacon facing off on the cathedral steps, is contained in this one song.
- A Latin chorus sings a prayer for mercy (the Kyrie) and a medieval chant of the day of judgment (the Dies irae). It is a device that lays down, in sound and from the very start, the film's religious backdrop and the judgment to come.
- The storyteller Clopin (Paul Kandel), the Archdeacon (David Ogden Stiers), and Frollo (Tony Jay) take up the voice in turn within a single song. It is an operatic structure in which solo, dialogue, and chorus follow one another without pause.
- The short bell figure (a brief phrase of a few notes) heard at the start of the song seems to recur throughout the film like a marker pointing to the cathedral.
- The 2021 25th-anniversary Legacy Collection includes demos sung by Menken and Schwartz themselves, along with German-language recordings from the Berlin stage production.
III. Out of the bell tower
(Tower) Twenty years on, Quasimodo lives in the bell tower, ringing the bells. His only companions are three stone gargoyles, Victor, Hugo, and Laverne. He grew up learning his letters from Frollo, and has always been told that the world is cruel and that someone who looks like him must never go outside. (Longing) When Frollo's lecture ends, Quasimodo clambers along the tower's parapets, gazes down at Paris below, and sings “Out There,” a song about wanting to walk among people for just one day. As the camera sweeps over the rooftops, the orchestra opens wider and wider. It is the moment when the heart of a character shut up in a tower spills out across the whole city. (Festival) That day was the Feast of Fools, when for 1 day a year everything was turned upside down. Quasimodo goes down to the square for the first time. “Topsy Turvy,” led by Clopin, is a big crowd number that merrily drives the game of crowning the ugliest face king. The Gypsy dancer Esmeralda draws every eye with her dance, and Quasimodo, his mask pulled away, is hailed as King of Fools. (Humiliation) The cheering does not last. A prank started by a few guards is taken up by the crowd, who tie him to the pillory and pelt him with whatever comes to hand. Frollo only watches from on high. Here the music sets aside the festival's dance and sinks heavily. Esmeralda was the only one who stepped out of the crowd to free him. For that she is hunted by Frollo, and with the help of Phoebus, captain of the guard, she takes refuge inside the cathedral.
Raised shut away in the bell tower, Quasimodo voices aloud for the first time his longing for the world outside.
- The song begins with Frollo's lecture. Within the same track Quasimodo answers it by singing his own longing, so a voice that seeks to tame and a heart that longs to break free are locked together in one song.
- It is the traditional song of longing (the “I want” song) of the Disney musical, in which the hero reveals what he desires. As it builds, the orchestra opens out, matching the scene in which the view widens from the bell tower to the whole city.
- Quasimodo's songs were sung by Tom Hulce, who also voiced the role. The actor who had played Mozart in “Amadeus” brought out the character's innocence with a clear, tender tone.
- In the Berlin stage production it was sung under the German title “Draußen,” and in the American stage production Michael Arden sang it as Quasimodo.
The Feast of Fools, where everything is turned upside down, brings Quasimodo both a brief glory and a long humiliation.
- The Feast of Fools was a real festival in medieval Europe. It was a game of turning rank and order upside down for a day, and the song carries that spirit into a merry, giddy dance.
- Paul Kandel, who plays Clopin, caught the directors' eye on the stage of the rock musical “Tommy” and was cast. His comically exaggerated delivery suits a character who is something like the festival's master of ceremonies.
- Partway through, Esmeralda's dance cuts in, briefly mixing in exotic melodies and rhythms. Because the humiliation scene follows right after the festival reaches its height, the song's giddy mood is also a device that makes the next scene hurt all the more.
IV. The same light, a different prayer
(Refuge) Esmeralda's life is saved by the right of sanctuary, under which no one may be arrested inside the cathedral. But Frollo posts guards at every door, and she is trapped within. The hunted outsider has come to stay in a house of prayer. (Prayer) “God Help the Outcasts,” which she sings as she walks among the pews, is the emotional center of the film. Other worshippers raise a chorus of prayers for wealth, fame, and love. In their midst she prays not for herself but for those who have been cast out as she has. That it is the tentative prayer of someone unsure of her faith makes the song all the deeper. After singing it she climbs the bell tower and becomes Quasimodo's friend. (Contrast) That night, two men sing with the same woman in their thoughts. In the tower, Quasimodo likens the first kindness he has ever known to the warm light behind a window. Before the fireplace in the palace, Frollo blames his attraction to her on her witchcraft, mixing confession and curse together. “Heaven's Light” and “Hellfire” are joined in a single track. The same feeling becomes light on one side and flame on the other. (Divergence) Meanwhile, with Quasimodo's help, Esmeralda slips out of the cathedral. Frollo resolves to burn Paris to find her. From here on the film leaves the colors of the festival behind for the colors of fire. The door to it is opened by the final chord of “Hellfire.”
Taking refuge in the cathedral, Esmeralda offers a prayer not for herself but for the outcasts.
- Esmeralda's dialogue was performed by Demi Moore, and her singing by the vocalist Heidi Mollenhauer. It is a classic example of a singing double, with one person providing the speaking voice and another the singing voice.
- Midway through, the worshippers sing a chorus of prayers for wealth and fame. Esmeralda's simple solo collides with this chorus, so that the song is built like a scene of drama.
- This song was written first, and “Someday” was written later as a more hopeful alternative. The directors, Trousdale and Wise, kept this song, saying it better suited the mood of the scene.
- The soundtrack album also includes a pop version sung by Bette Midler. Heard alongside the quiet prayer of the film version, it shows how differently the same melody can feel.
Over the same woman, Quasimodo sings of light and Frollo of fire. The two songs run together in a single track.
- “Hellfire” opens with a chorus of priests singing the Confiteor (“I confess”), the Catholic prayer of confession. The backbone of the song is counterpoint (the technique of weaving different melodies together at the same time), with Frollo's song flowing over the chant.
- While the priests confess again and again, “through my fault” (mea culpa), Frollo denies that the fault is his. The prayer and the lyrics pull against each other, and his hypocrisy is laid bare in sound.
- The song sets out in a bright B-flat major, passes through G minor, and settles in a dark D minor. The change of key (modulation) carried over from “Heaven's Light” follows the passage from light to fire.
- Tony Jay, who plays Frollo, made this song a landmark among Disney villain songs with his low, deep voice. It was called one of the darkest scenes in any Disney film, and it even became an issue in the ratings review.
V. Paris burning
(Arson) Frollo's soldiers comb the streets for houses that have sheltered Gypsies. Then comes the order to set fire to a miller's house with the family locked inside. Phoebus refuses and rescues the family from the flames, but for that he becomes a traitor. In the “Paris Burning” cue, drums and brass surge forward like a march, portraying violence committed in the name of the law. (Hideout) Using the amulet Esmeralda left behind as a map, Quasimodo and Phoebus seek out the Court of Miracles, the Gypsies' hideout. “The Court of Miracles,” led by Clopin, is a short, chilling song that threatens to put the intruders on trial on the spot. Here Clopin's clowning bares its blade. But Frollo, who has followed the two, raids the place, and every last Gypsy is captured. (Rescue) In the square before the cathedral, a stake is raised to burn Esmeralda. Quasimodo, chained in the bell tower, breaks his chains, swings down on a rope, and snatches her out of the flames. Then, lifting her high on the tower, he cries out for sanctuary. The “Sanctuary!” cue drives without pause for 6 minutes, from this rescue through the siege of the cathedral. The chorus steps forward again, and the bells of the prologue ring out transformed into the sound of battle. (Climax) At last the people in the square stand up to Frollo's soldiers, and Quasimodo pours out molten lead to defend the cathedral doors. The fight finally narrows to a last confrontation at the top of the tower, among the gargoyles. Its outcome will not be revealed here. But it is worth remembering that at that moment the chant of judgment heard in the prologue seems to sound again, and that the film in the end entrusts the passing of judgment not to a person but to something else.
This cue carries the action from the moment Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda from the pyre and climbs the bell tower through the siege of the cathedral.
- At just over 6 minutes, this is the longest instrumental cue on the original 1996 soundtrack album. With no song, only orchestra and chorus, it carries the rescue and the siege in a single breath.
- The chorus returns to the foreground, led by a Latin chant. The sound that foretold judgment in the prologue seems here to ring out transformed into the sound of battle.
- If the marchlike brass and drums of the preceding cue, “Paris Burning,” depicted Frollo’s army, in this cue the bells and chorus take the cathedral’s side and stand against them. Heard back to back, the two cues make the opposition unmistakable.
VI. Walking out into the light
(Dawn) The battle ends and day breaks. Just as the title of the cue on the original soundtrack album, “Into the Sunlight,” suggests, Quasimodo at last steps through the cathedral doors and stands in the sunlight. How the crowd gathered before him receives him is the film’s final answer. Rather than trumpeting victory, the music swells carefully, as if catching its breath. (Return) “The Bells of Notre Dame” comes back briefly in Clopin’s voice. The riddle posed in the prologue is sung again to the same melody. That melody, an uneasy question on first hearing, now rings with the answer held inside it, once the whole story has passed. The same song wraps the beginning and the end, completing the film as one great frame. (Credits) In the American release, the end credits play “Someday,” sung by the R&B group All-4-One. It was originally written for a scene in the film but was moved. This prayerlike ballad of waiting for a day when justice has not yet come widens one person’s story in the film to the world beyond the movie theater. (Stage) The songs later moved to the stage. They premiered in 1999 in Berlin as a German-language musical, Der Glöckner von Notre Dame, and a new English version opened in 2014 at La Jolla Playhouse and the following year at Paper Mill Playhouse. For the English version, Peter Parnell rewrote the book, added new songs, and turned the ending back toward Hugo’s novel. Comparing how the same songs sound different inside stories with different endings is another way to listen to this work.
A song that gave up its place in the film and moved to the end credits widens the story to the world beyond the theater.
- In the American end credits it was sung by the R&B vocal group All-4-One. Separate versions were recorded by different singers in different regions.
- It was originally written for a scene in the film but gave way to “God Help the Outcasts.” The 2021 Legacy Collection includes a version sung by Heidi Mollenhauer and Menken’s demo, letting us imagine how it might have sounded had it been used in the film.
- A prayerlike ballad about waiting for a day of justice, it seems to carry a touch of gospel. It sums up the hope that the film, in rewriting a tragic source, refused to let go of.
Lesser-known stories
(Recruitment) According to the production team’s recollections gathered in the film’s documentation, Jeffrey Katzenberg, then head of Disney’s studio, told Menken and Schwartz that the directors had already signed on, and told the directors that the songwriters were already set, drawing both sides in. Only later did it come out that each had been the bait for the other. Overshadowed by the dazzling result, this behind-the-scenes deal is rarely talked about. (Names) The gargoyles Victor and Hugo were named after the novel’s author, Victor Hugo, and Laverne after Laverne Andrews of the Andrews Sisters. At first the team wanted to name them after actors who had played Quasimodo in the past, but the legal department reportedly objected for fear of lawsuits. Mary Wickes, who voiced Laverne, died before finishing her recordings, and Jane Withers took over the remaining lines. (Songs) Several songs never made it into the film. Two love songs for Esmeralda and Phoebus were cut because they pulled the story’s focus away from Quasimodo. “Someday” was pushed to the end credits when the directors wanted a prayer song better suited to the cathedral scene. Traces of these songs survive, at least in part, in the demo recordings of the 2021 Legacy Collection. (Title) In the novel, Frollo is the cathedral’s archdeacon. To avoid backlash from religious groups, the film made him a judge. The American stage version turned him back into a cleric, Dom Claude Frollo. As a result, the confessional prayer in the song becomes the clergyman’s own prayer and sounds all the sharper. (Rating) The “Hellfire” sequence nearly received a PG rating at its first review. The production team checked shot by shot that the vision of Esmeralda in the flames was drawn without nudity. When the ratings board objected to the word sin, at Don Hahn’s suggestion a loud sound effect was laid over that passage, and the film received a general-audience rating.
Glossary notes 📚🔎
Leading motive (leitmotif)
(Literally) The German Leitmotiv means a leading (leiten) motive (Motiv). The Sino-Korean name yudodonggi (誘導動機, ‘guiding motive’) likewise carries the sense of a short tune that leads the listener. (In film·musical scores) A short melody that recurs whenever a particular character, place, or idea appears. Hearing that tune alone, the audience is reminded of someone or something even when nothing is on screen. It is like knowing, without looking, that the hallway will soon be noisy when the recess bell rings at school. In this film, the figure of the cathedral bells seems to play that role.
“I want” song
(Literally) The name comes from the English “I want.” (In film·musical scores) A song early in the story in which the protagonist confides to the audience what they long for. Hearing it, the audience begins to root for the protagonist and gets a sense of where the story will go. It is like announcing, on the first day of a new school year, the things you most want to try that year. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, “Out There” is that song.
Counterpoint
(Literally) The Sino-Korean daewibeop (對位法, ‘method of facing positions’) means a way of weaving notes by setting (位) them facing (對) one another. The English name counterpoint comes from the Latin punctus contra punctum, that is, note against note. (In film·musical scores) A technique of layering two or more different melodies so they flow at once, while each keeps its own shape. In “Hellfire,” the priests’ confessional prayer and Frollo’s song run simultaneously, revealing opposing meanings. It is like a round, where each group sings a different measure and yet the whole blends into one. In counterpoint, though, entirely different tunes may also be layered together. (Elsewhere) In literary or film criticism, the term is also used for a structure that sets two contrasting stories or characters side by side to deepen meaning.
Key change (modulation)
(Literally) The Sino-Korean jeonjo (轉調, ‘turning the key’) means to turn (轉) the key (調). (In film·musical scores) Moving the central tone of a piece, that is, its key, to another key partway through. Shifting from a bright major to a dark minor suddenly darkens the mood of even the same scene, and raising it a half step makes the emotion feel as if it has climbed a stair. It is like raising or lowering the key at karaoke, except that modulation changes deliberately in the middle of a song to express the flow of the story. (Elsewhere) People rarely speak of changing key in everyday life, but the expression changing one’s tone carries a similar feel.
Dies irae (day of wrath)
(Literally) In Latin, dies means day and irae means of wrath. Together they mean the day of wrath, the day God judges the world at its end. (In film·musical scores) A chant from the Catholic requiem Mass that arose around the 13th century. Its opening melody has served for centuries as a signal of death and judgment. In The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the chorus sings these words in the prologue and at dramatic moments to foretell the coming judgment. Just as a certain sound effect in a horror game can make you tense on its own, this chant is a sound that warns Western audiences of foreboding.
Cue
(Literally) The English cue means signal. It comes from the theater term for the signal telling an actor to enter or begin a line. (In film·musical scores) In film music, a single segment of music composed to fit a particular scene. It is written to length so that it enters at the exact moment the scene begins and drops out when it ends. On the soundtrack album, instrumental tracks marked score after the title, such as “Sanctuary!” or “Paris Burning,” are such cues. Just as runners start at the starting signal on sports day, a cue is the point where scene and music lock together. (Elsewhere) In broadcasting or live performance, it means a signal sent to a host to begin, as in a cue sign.
Singing double
(In film·musical scores) The case in animated or musical films where the actor who performs the dialogue and the singer who sings are different people. In this film, Demi Moore voiced Esmeralda’s dialogue and Heidi Mollenhauer her songs. By contrast, Tom Hulce as Quasimodo did both the dialogue and the singing himself. It is like a school play in which a friend onstage only mouths the words while another friend backstage actually sings.