XTRA-ORDINARY ?
On Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” (click names for video clips)
Apparently, something like 8 million
people watched the final of ITV's "X Factor" just before Christmas -
perhaps you were one of them ?
Although it's debateable whether
this show is really about finding and honing raw talent and creating superstars
(and most of the winners do seem to vanish without trace), it's clear that the
2008 winner Alexandra Burke
felt she had reached a pinnacle. Her £1 million recording contract began almost
at once with a re-make of the classic Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah"
which, as expected, became the Christmas Number One – with another version of
the same song, by Jeff
Buckley, in second place.
"Hallelujah" is an
extraordinary song which has a long history and 2008 was the twenty-fifth
anniversary of its composition, a process that took Cohen almost twelve months
of stress and frustration until he felt it was right. It has since been
rewritten, once by Cohen himself, re-issued, and performed by many artists, and
there has been much discussion about its meaning(s). At the heart of every version
however is the chorus "Hallelujah",
meaning of course "Praise the Lord".
For some of us the original Leonard Cohen version (most
accessible on the 1984 album "Various Positions", still available on
CD) cannot be bettered, and it is lyrically much more coherent than the rather
confused and confusing X Factor version.
It is filled with Old Testament images and allusions. Whilst Cohen, as
his name would suggest, is not explicitly Christian, he is fascinated by
spirituality, story and symbol.
The song begins by making reference
to David, king and musician, and by tradition singer and composer of the
Psalms. However, the references are hardly flattering, for 'though David "pleased the Lord" with his
music (cf I Samuel 16:14-end) he is then described as
"the baffled king, composing
Hallelujah" The next verse evokes the scene of David
seduced by his vision of Bathsheba "bathing
on the roof" for "her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you" (cf. 2 Samuel 11), which of course led to
adultery and the murder of Bathsheba's husband Uriah.
Quiet suddenly the song jumps to the
figure of Sampson, the leader and "Judge" in
These Old Testament worthies are
depicted at their most unworthy and in their weakest moments, but perhaps this
is the point for those who know the full story. It is the penitent and
chastened David who is restored as a great King and the broken Sampson whose
supernatural strength is given once more so that he may avenge himself and his
people on the Philistines. Cohen has a
sense of this movement through weakness and bafflement into new hope as he
sings:
There's a blaze of
light in every word,
and it doesn't matter which you heard:
the holy or the broken Hallelujah
The final verse in Cohen's version
is almost triumphant:
I did my best, it
wasn't much,
I couldn't
feel, so tried to touch
I've
told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you.
And
even though it all went wrong
I'll
stand before the Lord of Song
With
nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
Can we read the song as a story of
grace, of broken-ness, weakness and frailty transformed, and as the assurance
that in weakness we will find strength anew ?
Certainly in the Scriptures the
stories are told that way - remember too Paul's witness in 2 Corinthians: "I
delight in weaknesses …. when I am weak then I am
strong" (2 Cor.12:10). God's grace is given to broken, baffled,
fallible individuals who are raised up, and it is given to you and me, and our
only response can be a heart-felt "Hallelujah !"
In a Radio 2 documentary in November
last year, marking the 25th anniversary of the song, Nick Baines,
the Bishop of Croydon, said: "Where
it comes from is this: being open and transparent before God, and saying 'This
is how it is, mate.'"
Listen to the song (please, please,
please in the original Cohen version - borrow the CD from me or click above)
and see what you think.
Roger Clarke
January 2009