[HN Gopher] Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, and a Pulitzer Prize-winn...
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Hallelujah, Leonard Cohen, and a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer's
suicide
Author : Curiositry
Score : 62 points
Date : 2024-09-07 18:46 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (subtledigressions.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (subtledigressions.substack.com)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I don't remember when I first heard Hallelujah. But I do remember
| that I was mesmerised from the first verse.
| ycombinete wrote:
| I definitely first heard John Cale's version in Shrek.
|
| Until today I thought it was Rufus Wainright's version.
|
| But for some reason the version in the film itself is Cale's,
| and the version in the official soundtrack is Wainright's!
| woodruffw wrote:
| I think the claim that Buckley's version of Hallelujah is better
| than Cohen's (even the initial 1984 version) is controversial, at
| minimum :-)
|
| The observations about obscurity are good ones, however -- A
| Confederacy of Dunces is a _fantastic_ book, and it 's hard to
| say how many other fantastic works of music, literature, &c. are
| lost in closets and old laptop hard drives. But I think it's not
| as much about genius as the author seems to think: given that we
| don't actually know the denominator under "known great works to
| unknown great ones," it seems equally plausible to me that
| "genius" is not the rare or distinguishing thing we always treat
| it as.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Buckley's version is trash in my opinion. I've just listened to
| the official video on YourTube. I had to give up halfway
| through and switch to Leonard Cohen's version Live in London.
| Cohen sings it like it matters, like it's a matter of life and
| death. Moved me to tears.
|
| The gatekeepers have a lot to answer for.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q
| worik wrote:
| In matters of taste there is no right an wrong
|
| Only good an bad
| khazhoux wrote:
| I always say: there's no dumb questions, only questions
| asked by dumb people.
| StayTrue wrote:
| Seems like an extreme take. I think Buckley's version is
| sublime but love Cohen's too (which I've been privileged to
| enjoy live on a couple occasions).
| Quekid5 wrote:
| Your opinion is just that. An opinion. (I'll leave it at
| that)
| acchow wrote:
| I think it's a matter of taste. I just watched your link and
| it seems performative to me. I imagine a video from one of
| his earliest performances would have come off as authentic.
| But decades later, does he really even feel the same way as
| when he wrote it?
| rendx wrote:
| I like Daniel Kahn's version.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH1fERC_504
| woodruffw wrote:
| `s yz a gvt lyd :-)
| ptsneves wrote:
| This article reminds me of "the last days of roger federer"
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| Seems a little unfair on Yetnikoff and Gottlieb. There are
| potentially a whole heap of songs and books that are
| _potentially_ better than both Hallelujah and A Confederacy of
| Dunces; but they are undiscovered, and most will remain that way.
| It seems unfair that the author of the piece, with super-duper
| hindsight and a firm hand on the survivor bias handle, picks two
| survivors and then ridicules the editor and reviewer who didn't
| see precisely what everybody else didn't see either. Seems a bit
| of a cheap shot.
| worik wrote:
| I agree
|
| It is good that the barriers erected by record co panties and
| publishers have come down.
|
| But what now? Will we get more than Taylor Swift (bless her)?
|
| The Era of a few "stars" and legions of impoverished artists is
| hard to shake.
| noizejoy wrote:
| > The Era
|
| I see what you did there :-)
|
| > a few "stars" and legions of impoverished artists is hard
| to shake.
|
| Arguably "winner takes all" economies are a very common end-
| point in many disciplines - not just music / the arts.
| worik wrote:
| Odd to hear Leonard described as a late bloomer
|
| True he did not make records until his thirties, but Songs From a
| Room was a huge influence on me, in the 1970s
|
| Leonard was a huge star in many parts of the world then
| bazoom42 wrote:
| He was quite popular in Europe. "Various Positions" was a top
| 10 hit in several countries but wasn't even released in the US.
|
| Cohen was once asked why he was so much more popular in Europe
| than North America. He said it was probably because they didn't
| understand the lyrics.
| paul7986 wrote:
| Songwriting could be labeled a weird phenomenon like why do
| people suddenly have/hear melodies and lyrics pop in their head
| (myself since a teen). Where does it come from as I often
| wondered.
|
| Though songwriters write differently a lot write as noted above
| like Dylan, Dolly Parton and countless others (it just comes to
| them). While others like Cohen work on their songs .. maybe write
| a poem and then add music to it.. it's not all heard at once in
| their head. Elton John writes music to Taupin's lyrics. I have
| tried that before but the lazy boom hear it in my head and sing
| in Voice memos to remember it later i prefer. Im definetly none
| of those people mentioned above but songwriting is something i
| enjoy immensely.
| taylorius wrote:
| I daresay I'm in a minority of one, but I cannot abide Leonard
| Cohen's Hallelujah. In my opinion one of the most overrated songs
| in all of popular music.
| noizejoy wrote:
| > In my opinion one of the most overrated songs in all of
| popular music.
|
| What is the other metric you're implying?
|
| Because "popular" is the only metric in your statement and if
| that's also the metric you imply with "overrated", then the
| statement doesn't seem to make much sense to me.
| geertj wrote:
| Last month a guitarist named James Hargreaves posted a YouTube
| video [1] proposing a fascinating theory about the hidden chord
| that Cohen refers to in the first verse of Hallelujah ("Now I've
| heard there was a secret chord That David played, and it pleased
| the Lord").
|
| In the video, Hargreaves makes the case that the hidden chord is
| the third chord. It would be unplayable on an instrument tuned at
| the time of King David, and it is the chord that Cohen plays in
| the chord progression in the first verse under the word
| 'composing.' He then links this up with the 'third cord' (no h)
| from Ecclesiastes which indicates God blessing a marriage by
| being the third person in the marriage. This then explains the
| reference "But you don't really care for music, do you?" and the
| second verse which talks about King David and his affair with
| Bathsheba. Hargreaves then goes even further and suggests Cohen
| might have had an affair like King David and wrote this song to
| claim it was true love and blessed by God, as the third cord.
|
| Not sure how real this all is. But given that Cohen took years to
| write the song it would be quite likely there is a deeper
| meaning.
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/mp9hYxw-Q6I?si=OUB8W5m5dSckBOG2
| fsckboy wrote:
| i just finished watching it when I saw your comment, came here
| to post about it, you're right, it's a fascinating video
| twelvechairs wrote:
| Cohen has said in interviews he mashes imagery together and
| picks things that sound right. I'm sure some of the individual
| references are very true but not sure about any grand narrative
| explanations where all the lines and verses tie together in
| some exact neat way like this.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Yeah, maybe, who knows. Of course, you should be aware that if
| you search for a pattern long enough, you'll find one.
|
| Now, in this first verse are interesting lyrics that are
| referring to the chords being played, which I think are not
| hidden but you have to know a bit of music theory. English is
| not my first language so it might be a bit broken, but bear
| with me :)
|
| "The forth, the fifth" refer to the degrees of the chords being
| played at this moment. In C major, the 1st degree is the C
| major chord, the 4th is F major, 5th is G major. This is a very
| common progression, and usually it ends up in a 5th -> 1st
| cadence, which would be F major, G major and C major here. But
| you can also, instead of the expected 1th, go to the 6th, which
| is a A minor chord here. This is known as a minor fall, I
| assume, which is exactly the lyrics at that moment. But then,
| the lyrics mention a "major lift", which is also what happens
| when it goes through the same progression, 4th, 5th, but then
| the 3rd (E major) with one note lifted (the G#) making the
| chord major, and resolving to A in a true cadence, because E
| major -> A minor is a 5th -> 1st for the A minor scale.
|
| To summarize, the chord progression is faking a IV V I cadence,
| but falling to VI (A minor), then faking a IV V I cadence
| again, but lifting to a "majorified" III (E major) which become
| V I cadence in the A scale, allowing us to resolve on A instead
| of "falling" on A like the first time. So we went from the C
| major scale to the A minor scale, which are also the first two
| chords of the song, repeated many times.
|
| So, this whole "the 4th, the 5th, the minor fall and the major
| lift, the baffled king composing hallelujah" is nicely
| describing the chord progression underneath, while being
| poetic, and I just love it. So I had to share, sorry if it was
| obvious to you already. Cheers.
| geertj wrote:
| > sorry if it was obvious to you already
|
| It was definitely not obvious to me! What do you make of the
| third chord under 'composing' that would not be playable in a
| diatonic (?) scale that was used at the time of King David,
| as the video claims?
| Cushman wrote:
| > This is known as a minor fall, I assume
|
| Since turnabout is fair play, it's worth noting this is
| mostly false; if you google "minor fall music theory" you'll
| only find references to Cohen.
|
| In (conventional western) analysis, a "fall" wouldn't be
| something mechanical, it would always imply a contextual
| interpretation.
|
| So it's a valid reading of the text to say it means something
| about the chord structure, but -- from a purely musical
| theoretical perspective -- just as valid to read it as a
| reference to the flattening of the minor degree of the scale,
| or something else entirely.
|
| It's really a lovely song :)
| i4i wrote:
| Immediately after the book won the Pulitzer in 1981, Gottlieb
| could not recall Toole or the manuscript. In his 2016 memoir,
| Gottlieb wrote that, after returning to A Confederacy of Dunces
| decades later, he felt the same about its flaws.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Gottlieb
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