REVELATIONS - THE UNVEILING; REVEALING AND UNCOVERING OF THE SECRET CHORD

There is nothing new under the sun, the author of Ecclesiastes emphatically noted: All inventions are reinventions, all new stories merely fresh costuming for age-old tales.
 

Is there a secret chord that God likes? We know that there's one that gives Satan a major stiffy, the "Devil's Interval," which has been banned in liturgy for years because hearing it invokes infernal thoughts. Metal bands use it a lot now.

We're not talking about the Morning Star's iPod, though, we're talking about the chord or key that gets Big G's toes tapping.

Well, the David is of course King David. There are more references to David later in the song, in Cohen's lyrics about seeing a woman bathing on the roof (David saw Bathsheba taking a bath).

Now David was famous as a musician. Of course, so was the antichrist Nero, so take it with a grain of Job's wife. Still, David is credited with soothing Saul with song and starting the concept of Temple singing. He knew his chords is what we're trying to say, and there are legends of tones or notes so pleasing to God or the gods that they curry favor going back into antiquity.

In the case of "Hallelujah" at least, the chord seems to be C major, which is also the key of the song. The whole reason behind the Devil's Interval was that it was dissonant, a half-step below the perfect fifth that typically symbolized purity in music. Theoretically, whatever was the opposite of the dreaded triton would be the chord most pleasing to God.