Hunchback of Notre Dame

After having shared our first collaboration on “Pocahontas”, Stephen Schwartz and I embarked on turning Victor Hugo’s epic novel into a Disney animated musical. And, I have to say that I, for one, am extremely proud of how we did that.

We created alter egos for Quasimodo, in having three stone gargoyles come to life in ways that only he sees. For me, that’s what allowed the “Disney” name to sit above the title. And I will always believe that conceit worked. And the resulting score is very possibly my most accomplished score for any of my Disney projects. Just as “Colors of the Wind” set the DNA for the Pocahontas score, “Out There” did the same for “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”. The music and form of that song came into my head and into my fingers before anything else, words, music or images was created.