Babette Babich's new book, The Hallelujah Effect: Philosophical Reflections on Music, Performance Practice, and Technology, opens up Leonard Cohen's song ‘Hallelujah’ for a closer inspection. Babich studies the covers of this popular tune, which is often not recognised as Cohen's work. The focus of the book is predominantly on the version that k.d. lang sang at the 2005 Juno awards in Winnipeg, which can be found on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_NpxTWbovE.
The aim of the book is to explore, in light of Adorno's theories, the ways in which that music is being mediated electrically. The term electrically includes the online and wireless contexts such as Twitter and YouTube, otherwise known as social networks. Babich draws upon the way that we never hear the singer as originally intended, based on the premise that recordings are always virtual reproductions. The medium always changes the qualities of the recordings. Radio, for example, has had a fading quality to it since the beginning. Yet, even today the ‘radio voice’ frames the way we hear music. As such, Babich argues that it even affects the way that we hear live music. Most of these discussions are not new, but reading this in the philosophical context is interesting in itself.
The book itself is divided into three parts. The first one, Prelude, is composed of three chapters discussing mostly Cohen's ‘Hallelujah’ and its covers. The second part, Interlude, is just one chapter that discusses Adorno's phenomenology and his ideas of music played on the radio. The third part, Interlude, consists of three chapters discussing mostly Nietzsche's phenomenology and his idea of ‘becoming-human of dissonance’. Babich, herself a philosopher specialised in Nietzsche, understandably focuses on the philosophical aspects. Attention is also drawn to the fact that the book's three parts are somewhat disproportionate to one another. While the title of the book would let us believe that the book is about Cohen's song, the last two sections do not appear to connect to the actual topic.
Babich's book is at its best when she looks into why k.d. lang's version of Cohen's song seems to be more moving than other versions of the song, such as those by John Cale or Jeff Buckley. According to Babich, this has a lot to do with the way that the song is being sung, but also the meanings that the song achieves when performed by k.d. lang. The words receive their fullest potential when sung by her, while she is also able to incorporate one's pain and disappointment into the lyrics. Part of the performance is of course affected by lang's allusive performance that takes part of its power from her sexual preferences in relation to Cohen's lyrics.
There are nonetheless several things that bother the reader. First, the reader is left wondering how much of the book can be considered as unpublished new work, as one can find altogether over 40 references to Babich's old articles in the bibliography. Not all of these could be found from the footnotes. Part of the book's material can also be found from Babich's YouTube lecture on k.d. lang's ‘Hallelujah’ (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiqokYFnZec), which at some points follows the book almost word for word. It would appear that parts of the book have been elaborated further from the lecture. This lecture nicely wraps up the most interesting parts of the book itself, and when being spoken out loud, the key issues open up better. However, some of the side notes used in the spoken form nonetheless distract the reader from the main points when reading what appears to be a transcript, and could have been edited out.
Secondly, the book uses footnotes excessively. This is partly a problem created by the series guidelines, but it is also made worse by the author. By removing the references from the main text and placing them in the footnotes, Ashgate is supposedly trying to make their books more readable. The main idea is that one should be able to read the book without reading the footnotes and still get the author's point. This point is, however, lost quite a few times on several pages of this book, where the main text takes up only one-third of the page, with the rest consisting of footnotes. The reader cannot but wonder if she is supposed to read the text or the footnotes and if one is still going to remember the author's point after the reading the footnote or whether one ends up losing the flow of the text when looking at the footnote. Good readability is far from these pages. It must be said, though, that this is a problem that quite a few academics are facing.
Thirdly, the book is full of overtly long and complicated sentences, which does not help to open up the author's point, while it also makes the reading straining. In addition, the rules of writing in English are not strictly adhered to. According to literary guides, paragraphs composed of just one sentence, or sentences that take up more than four lines should be avoided. Unfortunately these can be found frequently in Babich's book, which gives the impression that the work has not been proofread or edited properly. The book also involves some condescending general statements as well as overly personal information which bother this reader.
Yet, if you are interested in Nietzche's ideas and their implementation into music you might find this book useful, as it does open up the topic quite nicely. The section on Cohen's song and k.d. lang's performance is interesting in its own right and would work very well on its own. This part of the book can nonetheless be found from the hour-long lecture available in YouTube, which can also act as an audio accompaniment.
