Aladdin the Musical: Composer Alan Menken reveals secrets behind Disney songs
How do you write a Disney song? Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken knows the answer to that question better than anyone.
The man behind the scores from some of the biggest hits in musical theatre and animated film, Menken is in town to help put the finishing touches on Disney’s Aladdin The Musical, which opens in Melbourne on Thursday night.
The composer has won eight Academy Awards for his work on the music for Disney’s run of hit animated films in the 1990s: Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid and Pocahontas. (You can expect to see more live-action remakes of some of those hits, following the recent success of Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson. Menken is awaiting the green light for a slew of live-action Disney films).
He has another 11 Oscar nominations under his belt, for songs from Disney films Tangled, Enchanted, Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as well as the less family friendly Little Shop of Horrors, the music for which he wrote with lyricist Howard Ashman.
Speaking to Fairfax Media during a visit to Disney Theatrical’s New York headquarters – the New Amsterdam Theatre, where Aladdin just celebrated its third anniversary on Broadway – ahead of his Australian visit, Menken ruminates on the essential ingredients for a piece of Disney music.
It’s not as simple though as naming specific motifs, flourishes or subjects. While romance and swelling strings are a part of many Menken songs, equally there’s a sense of humour to them, as well as a stylistic sensibility and a form of shorthand – a familiarity that audiences immediately grasp – that all marry to the imagery and action on a stage or on screen.
He names the cartoons of Al Hirschfeld, whose illustrations are synonymous with Broadway, and Bob Hope and Bing Crosby’s series of “The Road to” films (to a mish-mash of exotic locales, such as Zanzibar, Morocco and Bali, which mirror the fictitious setting of Aladdin) as inspiration.
“Many of the Disney projects that I’ve written, they’re tailored to the animation, which is also a specific world, a specific sensibility, a specific stylistic choice for both visuals and for music.
“I mean, when these projects are started on a visual level. For instance the genie in the movie was very much an homage of the Hirschfeld cartoons. So in the same way music is an homage …
“I love working in styles: it makes the work so accessible, it makes the work more memorable. It distinguishes between the works. To me it’s really rewarding to do that and a lot of Disney projects before me had a lot of those stylistic approaches to a degree.”
Menken fondly recalls writing the original music with Ashman, who died in 1991 (after which Tim Rice stepped in).
A number of songs that he and Ashman had written for the film, which was released in 1992, had never seen the light of day until they were revived for the stage show, he says.
“My first thought and passionate impulse was we had to break into the treasure trove of material that Howard and I wrote and see if there’s a way to work those songs in, because there will be no more Howard Ashman material. And everyone was fine with that.”
The plot had changed considerably since the songs were first written, transforming from what was originally conceived as a buddy film into a romance, says Menken, but playwright Chad Beguelin, who wrote the book for the stage show made them fit perfectly.
“Chad brilliantly figured out ways to incorporate those characters and still keep those existing songs and add back in a lot of the songs that we had written initially, and then became a great collaborator in writing parts of the new songs that weren’t covered by the old songs.”
Adapting the material to the stage meant further changes to the story, he said. “To write it, from the movie, absolutely, it changed. But now they’re sort of wedded in a wonderful way. I really feel like we protected Aladdin and added back in the lost material without losing Aladdin.”
Aladdin The Musical is at Her Majesty’s Theatre from April 20.
Tickets: liveshows.disney.com.au/aladdin-the-musical