First written in 1984, there are now over 300 versions of this song. The lyrics to the version I sang on 21 July 2024 are:
Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord,
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth,
The minor fall, the major lift,
The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof,
You saw her bathing on the roof,
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
She broke your throne and she cut your hair,
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
You say I took the Name in vain,
I don’t even know the Name,
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every Word,
It doesn’t matter which you heard,
The holy or the broken Hallelujah.
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
I did my best but it wasn’t much,
I couldn’t feel, so I 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!
Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah.
Cohen steadfastly avoided giving explanations for his lyrics, instead allowing cover singers and audiences to find their own meaning in the poetry. He did however say that “many different hallelujahs exist”, and that “there is a religious hallelujah, but there are many other ones. When one looks at the world, there’s only one thing to say, and it’s hallelujah”. I witnessed this recently in Porto, when around 2500 tourists gathered on a hillside to watch the sunset over the River Duoro (which is how the “Golden” River got its name). There was spontaneous applause as the sun sank below the horizon – a secular Hallelujah.
There are clear references to the Old Testament in Cohen’s original lyrics, including the stories of Samson and Delilah from the Book of Judges (“she cut your hair”) as well as King David and Bathsheba (“you saw her bathing on the roof, her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you”). King David is also very likely the “baffled king composing Hallelujah”. There is an oblique reference to the New Testament “there’s a blaze of light in every Word” where Jesus is of course the Word made flesh and the light of the world.
Famously, the harmonies closely follow the text of the first verse, “It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, The minor fall, the major lift”. Written in C major, the 4th is F major, and the 5th is G major; the ‘minor fall’ is set to A minor, and the ‘major lift’ is to F major, followed in the next bar by G major. This IV-V chord progression is an imperfect cadence, which fits the text perfectly.
Journalist Enuma Okoro wrote that “the lyrics and the tone of the song seem to sway between hymn and dirge, two musical forms that could serve as responses to almost everything that happens in our lives: songs that celebrate and acknowledge the blessings and provisions of our lives, and songs that bemoan our losses, our heartbreaks, and our deaths”. Furthermore, the word hallelujah is composed of two Hebrew words that mean “praise God”; Cohen said people have been “singing it for thousands of years to affirm our little journey”.
So why did I choose to sing it that day? Steph V, a member of the parish choir, had asked if it might be possible for the group to sing this song at some point. This reminded me that I had an arrangement for solo voice and piano accompaniment. I sang it with Jeremy in a parish concert around 10 years ago, and then forgot all about it. I set about searching for a choral arrangement suitable for upper voices, and found a version rewritten with Easter words. I bought 12 copies.
You’ll have to wait to hear our choir singing this song, but in the meantime, here are Tom and I singing this in place of an organ voluntary on the morning of our 2024 patronal festival: https://youtu.be/sY7zgEXa2ns
Carol P
St Margaret's Church Prestwich 