He said that the melody was derived from the tune he heard in the synagogue as a boy. Leonard Cohen has brought the prayer up to date. The synagogue prayer was written in the eleventh century but was based on a much older composition, dating back to the third or fourth century, which the ancient mystics used to chant as they tried to achieve mystical union with the divine. It is Cohen’s version of a prayer that is recited in the synagogue at New Year, that anticipates what may happen to us in the year ahead. Several of Leonard Cohen’s songs can be thought of as prayers. Or as Cohen puts it: there is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in. But the legend tells us that even when everything is broken, all is not completely dark. And in Anthem, we hear a kabbalistic legend about a cosmic catastrophe when the earth was created that allowed evil to dominate. In Ecclesiastes we hear that there is a time for everything – Pete Seeger used it for his song Turn! Turn! Turn! which was a hit for The Byrds in 1965. But like the biblical book, Anthem is not completely negative. He described the song as a reflection on the flaws of humanity and on our imperfections, which is also one of the themes of Ecclesiastes. We hear echoes in the song of the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, which was almost certainly one of his sources for his composition. In early English, the word ‘anthem’ was used to describe a sacred musical composition. The name hints at the song’s religious character. Leonard Cohen described Anthem as maybe the best song he had ever written. When there is nothing else left for us to do, the best we can aspire to is to sing Hallelujah. We rely on the power inherent in words, especially when everything goes wrong. And yet words are also profane, we use them to swear and abuse. Each word, Cohen says, has a blaze of light in it. King David is said to have written the Book of Psalms, where the word ‘Hallelujah’ comes from, and in the mystical, kabbalistic tradition words are sacred. Of how his kingdom began to fall apart after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and sent her husband into battle to die. Using legends from the Bible and the Talmud, Cohen sings about King David. Harry Freedman’s book Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots Of Genius HALLELUJAH Approaching Leonard Cohen in this way gives us a new way of listening to him, and helps to make his always profound music even deeper. Instead, I have tried to discover what his sources were, what their original context was, what the stories and ideas that lay behind them were and how Cohen harnessed them for his own purposes. I have not attempted to guess what was going on in his mind when he wrote a particular song. My new book Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots Of Genius explores the folklore, legends and Bible stories that he uses in his work. But the religious legends in his music mainly came from Judaism, the religion into which he was born, and from Christianity, which he said was all around him as he grew up in Montreal. He was a deeply spiritual man, he spent many years in a Buddhist monastery in California with his teacher Joshu Sasaki Roshi, who was perhaps the most important influence on his adult life. One of the most intriguing aspects of Leonard Cohen’s songs is how much he used Bible stories and religious folklore in his lyrics. Harry Freedman, the author of a brilliant new book on the singer-songwriter and icon, provides us with his essential picks
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