Hardworking Menken reaped plenty of comfort and reward - the awards cabinet in his studio holds eight Oscars, 11 Grammys, seven Golden Globes and a Tony award. Again, not the same melody, but it's a situation where everything is combined for a comfort feeling." "It's just the same sounds, the same vibes. "I think the whole idea is to make the viewer feel very comfortable, almost like slipping into a warm bath," he says.
Page points out that there's always something familiar about Disney songs. "It's new music, but it really isn't new music," says Tim Page, a Pulitzer prize-winning music critic, who is now a professor of music and journalism at the University of Southern California.
At an upright piano on press day in a fancy Beverly Hills hotel, Menken played us a medley of familiar Disney tunes: The composer and various lyricists have followed these rules in a passel of Disney pictures. The songs also need to fit the character and the dramatic situation. They "should elicit an emotion, of happiness, or of celebration, or of sadness, or of sorrow, or of love, or of laughter - whatever." "Songs should have an infectious melody and rhythm," he says. When Menken's writing for Disney, he says he's trying to move the story forward through song. Menken wrote three new songs for the live action version. They've kept the old songs, and added some new ones. For the 25th anniversary of the beloved animated version, the studio is re-telling the story with real people - Emma Watson and a cast of famous voices. He says he prefers his songs "to be hummable."Ī new live action 3-D version of Beauty and the Beast opens Friday. Menken scored The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and many other Disney classics. If you've ever spent an afternoon with "Under the Sea" or "A Whole New World" or "Be Our Guest" stuck in your head, you can thank composer Alan Menken. Emma Watson and Dan Stevens star in Disney's new live-action adaptation of Beauty and the Beast.