Hallelujah!-The Power of the Word

A minister I knew once questioned the depth or “the soul” of a song I wrote because it was “ a song of largely just Hallelujahs”. Today I’d like to take a moment on this issue and look at the word “Hallelujah” in some depth.

Its etymology is from the Hebrew and means “Praise Jah” or “Praise God”. Interestingly enough, it is a word that circumnavigates the globe and spans most languages. When translated, the word “Hallelujah” (or sometimes “Alleluia”) remains the same: In Spanish it’s “Aleluya”, in Finnish and German it’s “Haleluja”, in French it’s “Alleluia”, in Estonian it’s “Haleluuja”, in Icelandic it’s Halleluja, in Slovak it’s “Aleluia” and on and on like that. So it’s a word whose four syllables mean the same thing to most of mankind. Say the word almost anywhere in Africa and they know how you feel. Very few words translate that way. Consider even the word “God”. Even this word changes dramatically in its pronunciation and spelling in translation. “Hallelujah” is truly universal.

I know of no other word in language or song that carries such joy, such celebration, such depth of spirit and soul. With its four open vowels, it is a gorgeous utterance to sing and when sung alone or surrounded by itself and repeated over and over it is the epitome word of celebration in human language. I find that when I’m writing a sacred song and I am most filled with the spirit of God, these are the words that spill out of me over and over as the melodies pour through me from God. Over and over again, “Hallelujah”. It happens so often that I have to rewrite the lyrics into other words, otherwise most of my songs would sing nothing but “Hallelujahs”.

A man named George Fredric Handel used it to musically summarize his penultimate tribute to the birth of Christ in the finale of his “Messiah”. Who has not sat in wonder at the singing of this great gift to mankind as the same word cascaded from the choir?

Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

In no way comparing myself to Frederic Handel, I too used these words to great effect in a song that opened the performance of The Jenny Burton Experience which ran to sold out audiences for over seven years here in New York City.

Let’s start with a Hallelujah
Let’s begin with a Hallelujah

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

There is music in our lives
There is music in the air all around us
There’s a spirit in our lives
And the music and the spirit are one

Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

A simple statement, but with the weight and power of this amazing word you can be sure the audiences knew exactly where we were going with the inspirational intention of the performance. It set the spirit of the evening in stone and launched us cleanly and clearly into the realm of spiritual thought.

What is a word but a symbol for an idea. These sounds that come out of our mouths represent concepts large or small. Say the word “streetcar” and we know exactly what you mean. Say the word “God” and you will have as many definitions of that word as you have listeners. But say the word “Hallelujah” and the world is suddenly all on the same page and in some way feeling and knowing the light that you are experiencing. It is a word that bears repetition, no, in fact, clamors for repetition, for to say it once is not enough. It must be repeated and repeated in the wonder of God’s grace and power, love, soul, and spirit. It is the penultimate word in the human language in praise of God.

When life is at its best, in the moment when no other words suffice, for most of us here on this planet, out pops the word “Hallelujah”. This elegant and universal utterance captures the essence of celebration and is immediately understood deeply in the soul of all.

The Palms

The Lyrics

I like story songs. And I love a parade. There is great drama in a parade. You stand on the curb and wait excitedly for it to come. Whatever ‘it’ is – it could be your daughter playing the piccolo or your high school marching band or the queen of the day waving in the back seat of a convertible. It’s proceeded by bands and clowns and majorettes and often followed by the same. You stand on the curb and await the big moment as the excitement ratchets up. You crane your neck in anticipation of the big moment.

And then it’s there! And the tears come to your eyes, and hope is restored and somehow the wait always pays off in a laugh or a ‘wow’ or a splash of pride.

And then it passes by and continues on its journey. And you wish you could prolong the moment, but you can’t. It’s the very nature of the parade. It gives you a taste, but for a moment. Sometimes you can run along with it for a moment or two trying to prolong it, but usually, by then, it’s over. The crowds are too much and ‘it’ moves on down the road to another place in time. The Music

Cut to another story: I was in Santa Monica at my partner’s office. He had to go to a meeting and left me in the office finishing up some work. I was to wait for him to return. I finished my work and with nothing to do, pulled his old guitar down off the wall, dusted it off, tuned its woefully out of tune strings and began to fiddle. Suddenly out popped a fully formed song – verse and chorus. It was born so fast, I knew it to be a gift from God emailed in His inimitable fashion. He was saying, “Here’s one for ya’, Pete”.

How to remember it? I had no music paper, no tape recorder, 3000 miles from my studio and there was so much of it and it was so complete that already I began to feel it fading away in memory. I played it through again and thought, “I’ll just keep playing it over and over until I memorize it. But then my brain started to get in the way and I started considering other chord substitutions and alternate melodies and I thought, “Oh no, now I’m really going to lose it!”

Suddenly He gave me another great idea! I walked over to the phone, dialed home in NYC and calmly sang the song into my answer machine leaving explicit directions to my wife not to erase this message.

When I got back to NYC I relearned the song off the answer machine. There was a melody and the chord progression, but no lyrics. Since the song was so obviously a gift, I knew it would have to be a sacred song.

The Palms

On the way to Jerusalem
Thousands gathered to watch him go by
On the way to Jerusalem
There on the road
He carried the load of this world
As the colt carried him on his back
Colt and rider
Colt and rider
Colt and rider
On the dusty road

These are the palms of peace
Given in these times of strife
These are the palms we gathered
Thanking you for your life

These are the palms of joy
Given in these times of trial
These are the palms of homage
Bearing you mile to mile

So lay down the palms
Make the earth clean and pure
Lay down the palms
Comes now the Christ
Comes now the cure

These are the palms of dreams
Given in these times of doubt
These are the gifts we bring you
For casting the shadows out

Colt and rider
Hosanna in the highest
Colt and rider
Hosanna in the highest
Colt and rider
Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna
On the dusty road

Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna
Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna

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For more inspiring music you can download
and information about Peter Link, please visit Watchfire Music.

No Emotion

A woman called several weeks ago to thank me for a sacred song I’d written that she sang as a solo in church. We had a most friendly talk and near the end of the conversation she said proudly, “I just want to assure you that I sing your songs with absolutely no emotion.”

This took me back a beat and so I asked her what she meant by that and she explained, “Well, I think there should be no personality in church singing whatsoever, that the solo should be performed emotionless.”

As we talked I discovered a real confusion in this poor soul about the art of sacred solo performance. She was essentially confusing bad acting with emotion; and since she basically did not understand the craft of acting through song and did not like it when other singers “hammed it up” in a church solo, she had made the wrong decision that all acting/emotion in a performance was bad. I tried to help her make sense of all this, but she would have none of it. To her, ‘emotionalism’, as she called it, did not belong in the church service.

As a composer who has been thinking about this fascinating world of music for about 40 years now, I’ve come to think of music as essentially aural symbols of emotion. The drama of a song is hugely important to me as I write and governs its flow. Without emotion, what do you have? A passel of notes arranged by some intellectual method which most often results in a boring song – boring, because it does not go anywhere. Devoid of emotion, you have a song devoid of interest. It’s why people are not that attracted to computer written music. The computer is smart and can arrange music in lightening speed, creating millions of compositional patterns, but no computer has ever written a song that captures the public consciousness and probably never will unless somehow man is able to teach computers how to process with human emotion.

So I say to my friend, the soloist who sings with no emotion, please don’t sing my songs that way. Let the reality of your emotions be expressed through the lyrics and the melodies of the song. Touch people’s hearts with your feelings. Tickle their imaginations with your deep understanding of the full range of emotion that plays through a song. Share your emotional insights of these sacred songs with your audience, your congregation, so that all may take advantage of your spiritual insight.

When you hide your emotion or lid it down, you simply cut off the real experiential possibilities of the song. Bring your own particular corner of life to the song through your true feelings so that I may see the truth through your eyes. And if your personality, or better, your individuality, shines through the song, I say we’re all better off for it. If you can bring a tear to my eye or a laugh to my heart in the course of the solo, that really means that you have touched me so deeply with the truth of the song that I am moved – moved from one point of understanding to another higher one. And that, my friend, is why I go to church.