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S<\/span>ince the death of Leonard Cohen in November 2016, there have been no shortage of commemorations, obituaries, and editorials written about the late singer-songwriter\u2019s contribution to musical life in Canada and abroad. I recently attended Leonard Cohen celebrations at a Toronto synagogue where expert Seth Rogovoy, author of Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet<\/em> and clergy explored the Jewish roots inherent in Cohen\u2019s work, frequently alluding to another famous Jewish singer-songwriter, Bob Dylan. While listening to these comparisons, my nerdy, musical brain couldn\u2019t help but liken the relationship between Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen to that of another great duo: Mozart and Beethoven. A stretch, I know, but hear me out.<\/p>\n In many ways, the young Bob Dylan bore similarities to Mozart, as both composers displayed a sense of sprezzatura<\/em>, or studied nonchalance. As a young man, Dylan\u2019s genius was unfettered, effortless and prodigious, and Dylan could write masterpieces of folk music in a matter of minutes. Anyone who\u2019s seen Amadeus<\/em> remembers the description of how Mozart as a child genius could write sublime music on the first try. Mozart\u2019s first biographer, Franz Niemtschek described,<\/p>\n \u201cMozart wrote everything with a facility and rapidity, which perhaps at first sight could appear as carelessness or haste; and while writing he never came to the klavier. His imagination presented the whole work, when it came to him, clearly and vividly. \u2026. free and independent of all concern his spirit could soar in daring flight to the highest regions of art.\u201d (Niemetschek, pp. 54-55, 1798)<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s first draft of one of his most enduring songs, \u201cBlowin\u2019 in the Wind,\u201d also shows few crossings out in its first draft, written on a napkin:<\/p>\n Dylan\u2019s greatest works came as a young man, when he was young and idealistic and less interested in being a brand ambassador for Pepsi, Victoria\u2019s Secret and Cadillac, to name a few of his later career pursuits. While we can never know how Mozart\u2019s music would have progressed had he lived past the age of thirty-five, one can hope his output would have maintained greater integrity than Bob Dylan\u2019s Christmas album.<\/p>\n Beethoven, as opposed to Mozart, has always been painted as a composer who struggled and suffered for his art. Whereas Mozart composed symphonies in rapid succession, completing three of his greatest in one summer, Beethoven took years to complete his. Like Beethoven, Leonard Cohen could also take years to perfect a great song. Dylan and Cohen discussed their differing compositional speeds during a meeting Cohen described in Telegraph<\/em>:<\/p>\n \u201c[Bob Dylan] said, \u2018I like this song you wrote called \u2018Hallelujah\u2019.\u2019 In fact, he started doing it in concert. He said, \u2018How long did that take you to write?\u2019 And I said, \u2018Oh, the best part of two years.\u2019 He said, \u2018Two years?\u2019 Kinda shocked. And then we started talking about a song of his called \u2018I and I\u2019 from Infidels<\/em>. I said, \u2018How long did you take to write that?\u2019 He said, \u2018Ohh, 15 minutes.\u2019 I almost fell off my chair. Bob just laughed.\u201d<\/p>\n Reportedly, Cohen wasn\u2019t being entirely truthful. \u201cHallelujah\u201d took him five years to complete.<\/p>\n Beethoven and Mozart\u2019s relationship was unfortunately short-lived. Despite Beethoven\u2019s wishes to study composition with his great predecessor, Mozart was approaching death when he met the sixteen-year-old Beethoven. Mozart recognized Beethoven\u2019s talent, saying Beethoven would one day \u201cgive the world something to talk about.\u201d Beethoven\u2019s admiration for Mozart spanned throughout his career, and he eventually composed variations on some of Mozart\u2019s works.<\/p>\n Dylan and Cohen also admired one another, and Dylan at one point covered Cohen\u2019s great hit, \u201cHallelujah,\u201d echoing how Beethoven composed variations on works of Mozart. Dylan further displayed his admiration for Cohen, telling him, \u201cAs far as I\u2019m concerned, Leonard, you\u2019re<\/em> Number 1. I\u2019m Number Zero\u201d (The New Yorker<\/em>, Oct. 2016). Though Dylan believed Leonard Cohen was a great artist, he considered himself the greater of the two.<\/p>\n It is impossible to decide whether Mozart or Beethoven was a greater composer, much as, contrary to Bob Dylan\u2019s opinion, it is difficult to choose between Cohen and Dylan. Many have spoken out about the Nobel Prize Committee\u2019s recent awarding of the Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan. Opinion pieces in the BBC, Spectator<\/em> magazine, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, The Gentleman\u2019s Journal<\/em>, and countless blogs have argued that Cohen would have been more deserving.<\/p>\n Bob Dylan believed it was Cohen\u2019s synthesis of music and lyrics, rather than his poetry alone, which set Cohen\u2019s work above others\u2019. Dylan commented:<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people talk about Leonard, they fail to mention his melodies, which to me, along with his lyrics, are his greatest genius. Even the counterpoint lines\u2014they give a celestial character and melodic lift to every one of his songs. As far as I know, no one else comes close to this in modern music\u2026 His gift or genius is in his connection to the music of the spheres.\u201d (The New Yorker,<\/em> Oct. 2016)<\/p>\n Yet neither Dylan nor Cohen\u2019s works without music have received the same level of recognition as their songs. Both artists\u2019 stand-alone poetry has attracted composers, demonstrating their work\u2019s inherent connections to music. The famous American composer John Corigliano recently reset Bob Dylan\u2019s poetry in his song cycle, Mister Tambourine Man: Seven Poems of Bob Dylan <\/em>(2003).\u00a0 In 2007, Philip Glass, one of the twentieth century\u2019s most influential composers, composed Book of Longing<\/em>: A Song Cycle based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen<\/em>, based on a book of Cohen\u2019s poetry and artworks.<\/p>\n [bctt tweet=”\u201cThere is a crack, a crack in everything; that\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d \u2014 Leonard Cohen” username=””]<\/p>\n Unlike Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen had no interest in determining whether his work or Dylan\u2019s work deserved greater acclaim. He told The New Yorker<\/em>, “As I approach the end of my life, I have even less and less interest in examining what have got to be very superficial evaluations or opinions about the significance of one\u2019s life or one\u2019s work. I was never given to it when I was healthy, and I am less given to it now.”<\/p>\n Cohen gets it right. Evaluations and opinions of works of art, particularly works by great artists, are superfluous. I personally could never choose between Mozart and Beethoven, as each of their outputs contain sublime music and deep expressions of humanity in ways that have touched me differently at various points of my life. I feel similarly about Cohen and Dylan. In my teens, I turned to Dylan, mounting his poster on the wall of my first undergraduate dorm room and quoting \u201cMister Tambourine Man\u201d in my high school yearbook. Now in my twenties, I feel more affinity towards the graceful, spiritual Cohen. In 2017, his optimistic mantra feels more needed than ever: \u201cThere is a crack, a crack in everything; that\u2019s how the light gets in.\u201d<\/p>\n How a comparison between the styles of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen leads right back to Mozart and Beethoven.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":48,"featured_media":43119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6439,18,4967],"tags":[9470,1940,2019,3607],"yst_prominent_words":[],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/02\/Beethoven-Mozart-compared.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9bakr-bd4","amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43094"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/48"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43094"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43155,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43094\/revisions\/43155"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43094"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=43094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"(New](\"http:\/\/www.ludwig-van.com\/toronto\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/02\/bob-dylan-lyrics.jpg\")
#LUDWIGVAN<\/i><\/b><\/h3>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"