Montage 1: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love Lyrics - Chorus Line, A

Song Overview

Review and Highlights

Quick summary

• A mid-Act 1 collage where the line of dancers relives puberty, first crushes, and body-change chaos - fast cuts, faster counts.
• Music by Marvin Hamlisch; lyrics by Edward Kleban; conceived, directed, and choreographed by Michael Bennett with Bob Avian.
• On record, it appears as the first slice of a three-part montage; on stage, it plays like memory shards stitched to choreography.
• Recorded at Columbia’s 30th Street Studio for the Original Broadway Cast album produced for records by Goddard Lieberson.
• Later revivals preserve the structure while shifting tempos and textures, and educational editions adjust explicit content.

Creation History

The piece comes from the show’s DNA - real dancers telling real stories that were taped, distilled, and set to music. This section takes those oral histories and turns them into overlapping snapshots: a height lament, a furtive game of doctor, the shock of seeing parents as adults. Hamlisch and Kleban build the thing as a roller of fragments: riffs recur, jokes boomerang, and quick-fire dialogue lands inside rhythmic cells. The orchestrations, credited to Bill Byers, Hershy Kay, and Jonathan Tunick, keep the pit nimble - brass stabs, reed swirls, motoric piano, and percussion that snaps like a metronome with opinions. The album’s studio legend matters too: Columbia’s church-turned-studio, a marathon session, and Lieberson at the console coaxing theatre lightning into grooves. You can hear the room in the air around the consonants.

Onstage, the montage is framing, not filler. It telescopes childhood into a unified group myth: each person’s story becomes a chorus theme. A smart choice, because the show is about workers on the same line. The cut-and-splice form does the character work that individual songs would do in a more conventional musical, but without surrendering momentum.

Key takeaways

1. Teenage archaeology as theatre - the number digs up private rites and makes them singable.
2. Structure-as-meaning - a braid of patter, chant, and mini-solos that models how memories arrive.
3. Rhythm runs the room - choreography, diction, and groove fight for the same tight space.
4. Craft in the cracks - orchestrations pivot on a dime so a joke can land and a confession can breathe.

Song Meaning and Annotations

Plot

We’re still in the audition, but the room dissolves into flashback. The company rewinds to puberty: voices drop or jump, skin rebels, boundaries blur. Connie frets about being four foot ten while chasing ballet dreams. Others discover sex by rumor and experiment. Paul hints at secrecy as self-protection. The montage isn’t linear - it’s a carousel. In rehearsal terms, it reads like a sequence where new ideas elbow their way in every eight bars. In story terms, it shows how a chorus is formed from wildly specific lives, then pressed back into unison for work.

Song Meaning

At heart, it’s about micro-traumas becoming fuel. Audition rooms are full of people who learned early to turn discomfort into control. The text names the raw stuff - acne, shame, awe, curiosity - and the music wraps it in movement so it’s survivable. The mood tilts toward comic honesty but keeps a sting. The message is not that adolescence was cute; it’s that these adults built careers on mastering what once unraveled them.

Annotations

“To break out”

A quick flash of wordplay - yes, it’s about busting free, but also about breakouts. The line folds a universal rite (acne) into a chorus chant, a wink at how the body keeps its own diary.

“Four foot ten”

Connie’s height refrain is not just character color. The role’s originator, Baayork Lee, stands at exactly that height, which turns the joke into a document. It also sets up the punchline about pom-poms dwarfing her at cheer tryouts. There’s tenderness in the laugh - a pro learning the industry’s size bias early.

“Prima ballerina”

When Connie says it, the score threads in a motif that echoes the sonic world of “At the Ballet.” The callback is sly: dreams of rarefied art live inside the same brain that worries about gym-class humiliations. The montage collapses those distances.

“Robert Goulet, Robert Goulet”

A crush named with Vegas polish. The reference pins the teenagers’ pop-cultural horizon: lush baritones, variety specials, a TV living room where drama arrives in tuxedoed vowels. It’s nostalgia with a wink, not a curtain of mist.

“Secret - my whole life was a secret”

Paul’s aside hits differently once you know where his story leads. He is already practicing the art of withholding and performing - a singer who learned to edit his biography in real time. In a crowd scene, that admission is a flare.

Style and engine

Call it Broadway pop with collage instincts. Piano hustles the groove, drums keep the downbeat honest, reeds and brass underline punchlines or pathos on short notice. The vocal writing favors syllabic lines and clicky consonants so choreography can sit on top. You can feel the arranger’s hand in the quick color shifts: a sax nibble for mischief, strings for lift, trumpets for that “we’re marching into memory” edge.

Emotional arc

Start with jittery curiosity, widen to chaos and tease, and land on a wry acceptance: we were all a mess; we made something of it. The ensemble’s chant - hello twelve, hello thirteen, hello love - becomes a shrug that grows into a grin. Surviving adolescence isn’t noble; it’s simply the cost of getting here.

Touchpoints and context

The piece fits a long theatrical tradition where community stories braid into a single sound. Here, the modern twist is how much of the text reads like rehearsal talk and diary entries. Critics have long clocked how the show merges dance, dialogue, and song into one continuous flow, and this number is Exhibit A. It’s also a sly culture sampler: pin-ups, baritones on TV, studio slang, all rubbed together until they spark.

Key Facts

• Artist: Original Broadway Cast of A Chorus Line
• Featured: Full company with spotlight moments for Connie, Paul, Richie, Maggie, Diana, Val, and others
• Composer: Marvin Hamlisch
• Lyricist: Edward Kleban
• Producer: Goddard Lieberson (produced for records - cast album)
• Release Date: October 1975 (album issue)
• Genre: Broadway pop montage
• Instruments: Piano, drum kit, bass, reeds, brass, strings, percussion, ensemble voices
• Label: Columbia Masterworks
• Mood: candid, kinetic, sly
• Length: roughly 6:45 on common LP timings, variant by edition
• Track #: 5 on the Original Broadway Cast album
• Language: English
• Album: A Chorus Line - Original Broadway Cast Recording
• Music style: collage of patter, chant, and short confessional leads
• Poetic meter: mixed - syllabic patter with conversational iambs; chant figures in straight 4-4

Canonical Entities & Relations

• Michael Bennett - conceived and directed the musical; co-choreographer with Bob Avian.
• Bob Avian - co-choreographer and longtime Bennett collaborator.
• Marvin Hamlisch - composed the score; conducted in the studio and on stage in early runs.
• Edward Kleban - wrote the lyrics; drew from taped dancer interviews to shape the text.
• Goddard Lieberson - produced the cast album for Columbia Masterworks at 30th Street Studio.
• Bill Byers, Hershy Kay, Jonathan Tunick - orchestrators credited on the production and album.
• Baayork Lee - originator of Connie; later rehearsal director and revival stager.
• New York Shakespeare Festival - originating producer under Joseph Papp.
• Sam S. Shubert Theatre - Broadway home where the production opened in July 1975.
• Columbia 30th Street Studio - Manhattan studio-church where the album was recorded.

Questions and Answers

Where does this piece sit in the evening?

Mid-Act 1, as the first part of a three-part montage. It bridges early character intros into deeper backstories by treating adolescence as a shared origin myth.

Why a montage instead of a single standalone song?

Because memory is messy. The show prefers a collage that can jump-cut between voices and motifs without breaking the pulse of the audition.

What does Connie’s height refrain accomplish?

It grounds the montage in a concrete, funny frustration, and it ties the character to her originator. It also hints at how casting math can trump talent.

Is this number different in the film version?

Yes - the movie replaces most of it with a new song while dropping in a sliver of the original material. The film scatters the related monologues elsewhere.

How does the orchestration handle so many quick pivots?

By keeping the band modular - rhythm section steady, winds and brass on sharp punctuation, strings used as quick lift. It’s built for short bursts and instant mood shifts.

What is the dramatic function of the sex-and-secrecy beats?

They surface how adults learned their performance masks. Those moments explain both the hunger to be seen and the skill at presenting a version of self on demand.

Why is repetition so prominent?

Chant turns private memories into public ritual. That matters in a story about people auditioning to become one body of sound and motion.

Does the number have a life outside the original album?

Absolutely - you’ll find it on revival recordings, in regional videos, and in educational editions with light edits to fit younger companies.

What changes in the Teen Edition?

The explicit content in this montage is softened or removed, while the structure and purpose remain intact - a nod to age-appropriate staging without breaking the show’s rhythm.

Is there a definitive tempo or key?

No single one - editions vary. Some recordings sit around a mid-tempo feel that doubles in energy under choreography, with keys adjusted to company voices.

Awards and Chart Positions

The track itself was not a single, but the album and the show around it made history. The Original Broadway Cast album reached the U.S. albums chart, and the production secured a haul of major theatre awards, including the Pulitzer for Drama. In the mid-70s Grammys, the cast-album category was branded “Best Cast Show Album,” and the season saw the competition include a fellow Broadway blockbuster that took the prize; the cast album here is commonly cited among the nominees of that cycle.

How to Sing Montage: Hello Twelve, Hello Thirteen, Hello Love

This isn’t just singing - it’s aerobic storytelling. Treat the groove as a conveyor belt and place text on it cleanly. Then add the glances and the grit.

• Tempo: editions sit roughly around a mid 80s BPM feel with a common double-time feel near 160 when choreography tightens.
• Key: varies by production; common published and revival sources float between E major and neighboring keys to suit ensemble ranges.
• Time signature: straight 4-4 with patter-friendly subdivision.
• Range and voicing: ensemble SATB with quick handoffs; keep vibrato narrow in group passages for diction.
• Style: Broadway-pop collage - crisp consonants, bright vowels, no drag on the back of the beat.

Step-by-step HowTo

1. Mark the counts. Speak the text in rhythm at a slow click, then in double-time. Lock endings - the final consonant is part of the groove.
2. Chunk the script. Break the montage into 8-bar cells. Label who leads each cell so handoffs are audible and confident.
3. Breath economy. Shallow, frequent inhales timed to rests; avoid big tank-breaths that smear tempo.
4. Diction first, color second. Create a shared vowel map for ensemble lines. Add individual color only on designated solo bars.
5. Accent policy. Land story words - numbers, body terms, status markers - and keep function words light.
6. Move-and-say drills. Run the lyric while walking simple grids, then while marking choreography. The goal is stillness in the mouth and noise in the feet.
7. Mic sense. If amplified, step slightly off axis on hot unisons to avoid bursts; return to center for solo pips.
8. Common pitfalls. Rushing list phrases; overdark vowels; letting comedy flatten pitch; treating the montage like an intermission instead of a plot engine.
9. Practice kit. Click at 80 and 160; a piano to pitch check transitions; a lyric sheet with cell breaks highlighted; one rehearsal run of spoken text only.

Additional Info

The movie version makes a bold swap, replacing most of this montage with new material, while sneaking in a snippet of the original idea elsewhere. That editorial choice tells you how specific to stage the collage is - film preferred a different vehicle for the same coming-of-age charge.

The cast album’s backstory is its own piece of theatre lore: a marathon day at Columbia’s church studio under Goddard Lieberson’s eye, wrapping late at night after a long push. The project was part farewell tour for a producer who helped define what a Broadway album should sound like. Cast-album obsessives will also point you toward a 40th-anniversary edition that remasters and expands the material for modern ears.

Educational licensing has produced a Teen Edition that trims the riskiest bits of this collage while preserving the bones. The aim is simple: keep the ritual of memory and movement but frame it so schools can program the show without sacrificing that hard-earned honesty.

Finally, if you love arranger-orchestrator craft, this is catnip. The credited team works in tight relay, and archival notes point to additional hands helping to shape the montage’s moving parts. That’s one reason it plays like a single breath even as characters trade the mic - the band knows how to color a cut to feel inevitable.

Sources: IBDB; Playbill; Masterworks Broadway; CastAlbums; Discogs; The New Yorker; Wikipedia; Concord Theatricals; SongBPM; Spotify; YouTube.