Long - Sawyer - The Bible in Music

Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. – 372 p.

ISBN 978-0-8108-8451-9 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8108-8452-6 (ebook)

 

There have been numerous publications in the past decade or two on the Bible in literature, the Bible in art, the Bible in film, and other aspects of the reception history of the Bible but nothing comparable on the Bible in music. Many highly successful oratorios, operas, musicals, and other works based on biblical themes, although originally written for the liturgy, Jewish or Christian, are more often performed for secular audiences than in churches or synagogues and are thus one of the chief ways in which the Bible interacts with culture. Furthermore, biblical language and imagery are present not only in music specifically written for Jewish or Christian audiences but also in numerous secular works, including ballets, operas, folk songs, and rock music.

 

Musical works often contain innovative applications of biblical texts (Isa. 66:13 in Brahms’s German Requiem), variations in the original plot (Handel’s Jephthah), and striking modern interpretations (The Residents’s “Burn Baby Burn” on Judg. 11:31–40). There are also some pieces written for instruments alone, such as Kuhnau’s six Bible Story Sonatas for keyboard (1700), in which biblical characters and themes are dramatically portrayed in music without words. The marriage of the Bible with music, ranging from the sublime (Allegri’s Miserere) and the ceremonial (Zadok the Priest [1 Kgs. 1:38–40]) to the militaristic (Mine eyes have seen the glory) and the subversive (The Margate Exodus), is so much part of its reception history as to make it almost impossible to separate them.

 

Yet the Bible in music lags far behind the Bible in literature and the Bible in art. Two recent works by the American cantor Helen Leneman, The Performed Bible: The Story of Ruth in Opera and Oratorio (2007) and Love, Lust, and Lunacy: The Stories of Saul and David in Music (2010) are conspicuous exceptions, as are our own publications, J. F. A. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (1996), which has a chapter entitled “Isaiah in Literature and Music,” and Siobhán Dowling Long, The Sacrifice of Isaac: The Reception of a Biblical Story in Music (2013). Several reference works now give some prominence to the Bible in music: J. F. A. Sawyer, A Concise Dictionary of the Bible and Its Reception (2009), the Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (ed. Sawyer, 2006), the Oxford Handbook of the Reception History of the Bible (ed. Lieb et al., 2011), and the 30-volume Encyclopaedia of the Bible and Its Reception (ed. Allison et al., 2010–). The same is true of two new series of biblical commentaries: first, the Blackwell Bible Commentary series, of which 11 volumes have so far been published (www.bbibcomm.net), including the first volume of Susan Gillingham’s Psalms commentary, where musical interpretations of the text are naturally prominent, and, second, the Eerdmans Illuminations series (https://illuminationscommentary.wordpress.com), of which the first part of C. L. Seow’s Job commentary, already published, nicely demonstrates the exegetical value of music. But in all these, music is just one among many other contexts alongside art, literature, film, drama, politics, theology, and so on. There is nothing comparable, for example, to the very popular Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature,edited byD. L. Jeffrey(1992), or the more recent Blackwell Companion to the Bible in English Literature (2010).

 

* * *

 

HALLELUJAH

 

Ballad by Leonard Cohen originally published in Book of Mercy (1984) with other poems inspired by the Bible and the Jewish liturgy and first released on the studio album Various Positions (1984). Over 100 cover versions of the song now exist, with popular renditions by Jeff Buckley, Bob Dylan, k.d. lang, Justin Timberlake, Regina Spektor, and, more recently, the 2008 UK X Factor winner Alexander Burke, whose single became the fastest-selling European digital download in history, selling over 105,000 copies in 24 hours. John Cale’s version appeared in the movie Shrek (2001). The Christian rock band Cloverton added new lyrics that focus on the Nativity story (vv. 1–4) and Christ’s crucifixion (v. 5), released as a single on A Hallelujah Christmas in 2011. The song’s title derives from the Hebrew word hallelu-yah, “Praise the Lord,” particularly in the Hallel Psalms sung at Jewish festivals (Ps. 113–118). With dramatic irony, this modern-day Psalm contrasts the adoration of the Lord in the Psalms of David with the narrator’s adoration of his lover since, unlike David, whose mystical harp playing pleased the Lord (1 Sam. 16:26), he could never please his lover. He is like David captivated by Bathsheba’s beauty when he saw her bathing (2 Sam. 11:2) but then is disempowered like Samson by Delilah (Judg. 16). Love led him along a path of sorrow and brokenness despite moments of intimacy, and in a final verse alluding to the killing of Uriah (2 Sam. 11:6–17), he tells us he learned nothing from love except how to ward off potential rivals. The original version in C major is in compound quadruple meter to create a lilting effect, and Cohen’s performance, accompanied by theater organ, electric guitars, drums, saxophone, and backing chorus, evokes the sound of gospel music.