Alan Menken and Howard Ashman
and others

A "Musical Renaissance" took place in 1988 with the release of Oliver and Company. This was Disney's first full-scale animated musical in more than 10 years. The film's music was written by pop stars. After that movie, Alan Menken and Howard Ashman started on The Little Mermaid. I think this marked a new era in Disney movies. Ashman had been a long-time lyricist with Menken composing the songs. They won an Academy Award for the song "Under the Sea" and that was only the beginning in what is certainly to be a great line of songs and scores.

In Beauty and the Beast, Ashman and Menken got 3 Academy Award for "Be Our Guest" "Belle" and the winner "Beauty and the Beast." When Howard Ashman died in March 1991, they had already begun to work on Aladdin. Three of his songs (including "Friend Like Me" and "Prince Ali") were included in the film. After Ashman's death, Tim Rice (who worked on Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita with Andrew Lloyd Webber) joined Menken to finish the score and the remaining three songs, "One Jump Ahead", a reprise of "Prince Ali" and "A Whole New World" which won an Academy Award.

Disney's music continues to grow with people like Alan Menken, Tim Rice, Elton John (the pop star) and Stephen Schwartz (the famous lyricist from musicals like Godspell and Pippin.) Rice joined up with Elton John for The Lion King and Menken created Pocahontas with Schwartz. Menken and Schwartz joined forces to create the music for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Menken and David Zippel teamed up forHercules. Zippel joined forces with composer Matthew Wilder for the songs in Mulan and Jerry Goldsmith composered the score. Going back to the pop star genre of composer that Disney had so much success with for The Lion King, Phil Collins composed the songs for Tarzan while Mark Mancina composed the score.


I got the majority of the information above from The Illustrated Treasury of Disney Songs published by Hal Leonard Publishing Corporation and Hyperion. ©1993 by the Walt Disney Company. I did NOT simply copy the information however. I arranged it in an original manner, so I should not get tossed into the slammer.


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