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The Bells of Notre Dame

"The Bells of Notre Dame"
Song by Paul Kandel
David Ogden Stiers and Tony Jay from the album The Hunchback of Notre Dame: An Original Walt Disney Recording
Released May 28, 1996
Length 6:26
Label Walt Disney
Writer(s) Stephen Schwartz
Composer(s) Alan Menken
Producer(s) Alan Menken
Stephen Schwartz
The Hunchback of Notre Dame: An Original Walt Disney Recording track listing
"The Bells of Notre Dame"
(1)
"Out There"
(2)

"The Bells of Notre Dame" is a song from the 1996 Disney film, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz. It is sung at the beginning of the film by the clown-like gypsy, Clopin. It is set mainly in the key of D minor. (However, the movie is edited up a semitone, therefore playing this piece in E-flat minor.) The song bears some similarity to the poem The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe, especially the repetition of the word "bells" during the crescendo. The song is reprised at the end of the film.

The origin of this song came with the controversial swap made by Disney executives of Claude Frollo from an Archdeacon to a Minister of Justice. One of the sideffects of this was that a backstory had to be fabricated to explain what Frollo was doing caring for Quasimodo in the first place. The notion that "Frollo is encouraged by the Archdeacon of Notre Dame to raise Quasimodo as his own, to atone for killing the baby's gypsy mother" had to be explained in the opening scene of the musical, and that was the catalyst for the song's creation.Disney Voice Actors: A Biographical Dictionary explains that "the opening sequence of [the film] was originally all narration and the result was deemed too lifeless so ['The Bells of Notre Dame'] was written".

Alan Menken said "It's a really rich number and I think it's possibly the best opening number I've ever written for any project".

With the DVD release, a multilingual version of Bells of Notre Dame made of all the 31 original dubs was included in the bonus material. Since its first release, more dubs have been made, including some unofficial dubs, made by local TV stations.

The song details about Quasimodo's origin and is the film's opening credits.


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