Hallelujah

By Tom Quiner

It’s a simple song.

The refrain uses but two chords, alternating between A minor and F major in 6/8 time.

Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” is one of those soulful songs that stops you in your tracks. Cohen knows how to tell a story. In other words, his lyrics are wonderful, provocative, soul-searching.

But let’s face it, it is his one-word refrain that makes this song a masterpiece: Hallelujah sung against a minor chord.

Shouldn’t a word like Hallelujah be sung against a major chord? The music suggests a lyric more in line with, “I am lonely, oh so lonely.”

And yet that’s what makes the song so utterly haunting, this disconnect between the meaning of the word and the meaning of the music.

The praise sung in the song is a more introspective way of giving thanks. When we sing Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and who hasn’t, it’s hard not to close our eyes and talk to God at an especially deep level.

When you put a choir of 1500 singers together with Rufus Wainwright, the results are other-worldly, as you can see in the video above.

When you gather at the Quiner household (below), the results may not be quite so other-worldly, but it sure is fun!

If you want to create world peace, bring warring factions into a hall to sing a soulful song together like this one. There is something about creating beauty together that truly binds us.

Thank-you, Leonard Cohen, for another masterpiece.