Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.” Adam Cohen, a musician and Leonard’s son, strikes a balance between sounding like his father and imbuing a youthful sensuality of his own to the song, as he performs it at a 2012 London concert.īefore he was a recognized singer, Cohen shared the lyrics of “Suzanne” with Collins, and from there, his career was launched. In the letter, he writes, “I think I will follow you very soon. Though they parted ways, they saved a place for one another in their hearts, as evidenced by the letter he wrote her while she was dying of leukemia in Oslo in 2016. The 2019 documentary film, Leonard and Marianne, romanticizes their carefree bohemian life. Perhaps this is the quintessential Leonard Cohen love song written to Marianne Ihlen, the Norwegian woman he lived with on Hydra in the ’60s. These are prayers.”Īlso Read New Series To Chronicle Leonard Cohen’s 1973 Yom Kippur War Concerts Perhaps Bob Dylan defined Cohen’s songs best when he said, “These are more than songs. Cohen partook in the perks of fame, moved on to meditative seclusion, and then returned to performing sold-out concerts around the world. He began his career as a poet and novelist in Montreal, sojourned to the Greek island of Hydra where he met his muse, Marianne, then Judy Collins sang “Suzanne” and from there, his career gradually morphed into the musical stratosphere. Cohen’s life trajectory is well known to fans. From his first 1967 album Songs of Leonard Cohen to his elegiac 14 th studio and final album You Want it Darker in 2016, he sang about relationships, reflected on life, death, love, impermanence, and Biblical themes. When asked about his baritone, he was the first to say, “I never thought I could sing.”īut sing he did. Philosopher king and ladies’ man, poet and ordained Buddhist monk, aesthete and pilgrim - in his nearly 50-year musical career, Cohen embodied contradictions and sang his story-songs in a trademark sandpapery voice in the pursuit of beauty and truth. MUSIC science.To paraphrase a saying attributed to Buddha, when the student is ready, the Leonard Cohen song will appear. Although a good case can be made for a particular variant of the one chord that's particular to flamenco music which adds a flat-9 to it (in the key of E-phrygian this results in an Emaj chord with an extra F-natural, spelled E - F - G# - B). Since all the rest are named in the song, my guess is that the "secret" chord is likely either the major two or the major three. And these are the six most prevalent chords in Cohen's music too. That's the major two, the major three, the fourth (minor), the fifth (major), the minor fall (sixth), and the major lift (one). That's the minor four, the major three, the major two, and the major one.Īdd in the two missing chords from Hallelujah which are named specifically, and you get the following six chords: II, III, iv, V, vi, and of course the I Of course I'm presenting this from the perspective of a minor key, and most flamenco music isn't in a minor key at all, so the progression properly looks like this from the perspective of Phrygian mode: iv - III - II - I Which, when translated into, say, the key of A-minor, results in the following four chords: Amin - Gmaj - Fmaj - Emaj This is one of the defining characteristics in flamenco music.įrom the perspective of a minor key, the progression looks like this: i - VII - VI - V Cohen was probably referring to the Andalusian Cadence, sometimes also called the "Phrygian Cadence/Progression".
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