Music Fit For A 'Prince'

M

usic is
among the
weapons in
our arsenal
of storytelling," said Jeffrey
Katzenberg, "and probably
the biggest challenge of
this movie is how to tell 80
years of a man's story in 90
minutes."
By making The Prince of
Egypt a musical, songs can
be utilized for "dramatic
and narrative storytelling,"
Katzenberg said. "So we're
able to take 'Throuah
b
Heaven's Eves,' a 4 1/2
minute song, literally tell
10 years of a man's life,
and you can really sense
the evolution of the char-
acter and time going by."
While the movie musical has all
but disappeared, the tradition lives
on in animated features. "I think the
reason one does music in animated
movies is because you can,"
explained songwriter Stephen
Schwartz. "The audience is already in
a state of suspended disbelief; there-
fore you can get away with singing."
Schwartz, an Oscar-winner (for
Disney's Pocahontas) and a Broadway
veteran (Pippin), found The Prince of
Egypt a particular challenge, but not
one for which he
was unprepared.
He wrote the
music and lyrics
for the Broadway
hit Godspell and
the score for the
play Children of

Eden.
"It must be
obvious," he said,
"[that] when
you're dealing
with material
such as the Book
of Exodus, there
are a lot of sensi-

music must have sound-
ed all that time ago,'
but to actually find an
emotional current that
you can put through
this. You don't want to
do a history, lesson and
leave emotions behind."
For his part,
Schwartz did extensive
research of Hebraic folk
tunes and chants, and
even uncovered some
music from the courts
of ancient Egypt.
"But I found that
oddly enough, they

bilities that
could be
offended. At
the same time,
one doesn't
want to be so
busy worrying
about that, that
you don't tell a
story you want
to tell, and you
don't deal with
the characters

Above: Ofra Haza, one of
Israel's most popular
singers, sings Yocheveds last
lullaby to her baby as she
sets him adrift- on the Nile.

Below: Stephen Schwartz,
right, wrote the six origi-
nal songs
heard in the film,
6
and Hans Zimmer, left,
composed the score.

and the emotions in a dramatic way.
"It's not so much a matter of say-
ing, 'You can't go there because peo-
ple will be offended,' as just being
aware of the dangers. And probably
going there anyway."
Finding the right mix of the rever-
ential and the creative was also a
challenge for Hans Zimmer, an
Academy-Award winner himself for

The Lion King.
In addition to writing the score
for The Prince of Egipt, Zimmer
serves as the head of DreamWorks'
film music division.
"For me, it was important to open
it up," he said, "and not to go, 'Oh,
this is how Hebraic or Egyptian

didn't sound like
what they were," he
said, "that our imagi-
nation and race mem-
ory of that music is
[different]. Therefore
I went more with
what we think the
music is rather than
what it was."
Schwartz
approaches projects
with religious themes
"as if they were sto-
ries being told for the
first time," and tries
"to deal with the
human aspect of it."
Zimmer felt that he, in a sense,
had to put his religious upbringing
aside to work effectively on The
Prince of Egypt.
"Every time I sat down to write
something," he explained," "it either
sounded Jewish or Catholic, because
I kept drawing on those sources
from my own European back-
ground. That was the hard part, to
actually throw all those precon-
ceived ideas out and come up with
something that was pure and simple
and that belonged to this movie avtcl
nowhere else." fl

— Serena Donadoni

"Mb

12/18

1998

Detroit Jewish News

75