“There were ‘Hallelujahs’ that were sung by the congregation, but at a major church it could be an opportunity for a composer to create a larger-scale piece that is performed by a choir,” Rathey said. In the first half of the traditional Mass in the Catholic, Anglican and Lutheran traditions, there are two biblical readings separated by several musical pieces. Thousands of works of classical liturgical music use hallelujah, in part because there was a great need for them. “The focus is not on the word anymore it’s really on playing with sound and virtuosity.” “Because it’s only one word and it has that final long ‘ah,’ it inspired composers to write very beautiful, almost instrumental lines that put celebration and the sound of music in the foreground,” he said.
Historically, the word has offered composers and vocalists the opportunity to use the voice in unusual ways, Rathey said. It feels like this beautiful flowing stream of sound.” “It has all these long vowels, and all the consonants are liquid as well. “It’s like the perfect word to sing,” Gershon said. There’s even an adjective: hallelujatic.Īll those vowels lend themselves to music. The Oxford English Dictionary lists eight English transliterations from the Hebrew, including alleluia, allelujah and hallelujiah. That musical power comes through no matter the spelling. “Hallelujah is almost music already, even without a musical setting.” “I must say, personally, hallelujah sounds so much more beautiful than simply just ‘Praise the Lord,’” Rathey said. Markus Rathey, a professor of early Christian music at Yale University, said it suggests the word was already charged with an emotion that transcended its linguistic meaning. Scholars can’t say for sure why hallelujah was preserved intact when nearly every other Hebrew word in the Bible was translated first into Greek and then into Latin (amen is another notable exception). “They are praising God for delivering his promises and protecting his people.” “They are praising the salvation from oppression and violence,” Blumhofer said. In response to this deliverance the people cry out, “Hallelujah!” All four come at the climax of the text, when God delivers his people from the destructive power of Babylon.
Hallelujah shows up just four times in the New Testament, all in the Book of Revelation. “It’s a very joyous prayer, very beautiful and very meaningful.” It’s part of the Passover Seder,” she said. “We say it on Rosh Hodesh, the first day of the month celebration. Sarah Bunin Benor, director of the Jewish Language Project and a professor at Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles, said hearing the word makes her think of the Hallel - a recitation of Psalms 113-118 chanted by observant Jews on holidays. “It’s meant to usher you into the experience of praising who God is and what God’s done.” “Hallelujah functions as a summary,” said Chris Blumhofer, assistant professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena. There it generally prefaces the beginning of a passage or shows up at its conclusion. Hallelujah first appears in the Book of Psalms - a compendium of sacred poems in the Jewish Bible that dates to the 5th or 4th century BC. That opens up even more possibilities to the liquid, fluid approach to the word, Gershon said. “I imagine an older Russian person in front of an icon, just murmuring to themselves, ‘Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah,’ ” Gershon said.Īs a side note, the Russians add an extra vowel sound to their hallelujah and drop the “H” so it is pronounced Ah-lay-lu-ee-yah.
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