Stephen SchwartzThe Hunchback of Notre Dame: The Stage Musical: Vocal Selections

Now, it's a very nice songbook. Perfect if you're a fan of Disney'sThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (here, perticularly the stage musical). And I don't want to be too harsh here, cause I'm a big fan myself. But my only critic is, as many others have pointed out, that the songs are very much shortened. They kinda cut off the intros and the middle parts and sometimes the ending. The songbook from the movie has the whole songs to 100%. But it is a LOTS of songs in this version (including the songs from the movie) and I guess the book would have been a little too long if including absolutely everything. And maybe some parts feels a little too "talk-ish", so that might also be a reason. I guess you'll have to just sing those parts instead, or try playing it by ear. Other than that, they're still having the somewhat most important parts of it and I still enjoy it. Just be prepared for what you're getting! ;)

Just what I needed

Die Auswahl der Stücke gefällt mir gut. Wie üblich sind die Stücke im Vergleich zum original eingekürzt. In diesem Fall meiner Meinung nach etwas zu sehr, allerdings haben die Originale ja auch viele Underscore Teile.

This is very useful as I am performing with my singing group in July. It arrived on time and now members of my group are envious and asked me where \i got the song book from

First of all, here are the positives of this book. The music is amazing. I personally think it’s Alan Menken’s best overall score and every song from the musical is included in the book. This book is a good starting place to learn the chords and melodies for the songs in most cases and it does its job well enough. Now the negatives. As a few other reviews have pointed out, some of the songs are shortened. Some of these cuts make sense. “Flight Into Egypt” has much of the middle cut out as it’s mostly dialogue, so there wasn’t a reason to include it. However, many of these cuts don’t make sense and hurt the overall song. “The Bells of Notre Dame,” “Topsy Turvy,” “Rest and Recreation,” and “Out There” all have sections that have been cut out, and it doesn’t make sense as to why. There are important sections that have melodies and lyrics that weren’t included in these pieces, whereas in a song like “Top of the World,” dialogue and lyrics explaining the plot were left in. The worst offender is “Esmeralda,” the Act I finale. What is supposed to be a 5 and a half minute finale was cut down to just 54 measures, which was the most disappointing aspect of this book. Another problem is that some of these songs aren’t in the correct key. Every section in “Esmeralda” is in the wrong key, and these changes don’t make sense and make it more difficult. There’s also a key change in the middle of “Hellfire” when such a key change doesn’t happen in the movie or the musical. But overall, the book does its job. While it’s inconvenient to have to transpose some of the songs and learn the missing parts by ear, this book is full of good arrangements that generally include the most important parts of each song. And for $20, this definitely beats trying to learn everything by ear. If you’re a fan of the musical, I’d recommend this book. It won’t have exact arrangements of the pieces, but it’s still well written and does Alan Menken’s music justice.