‘Hallelujah’ Singer Leonard Cohen Dead at 82

On Thursday, it was revealed that Leonard Cohen had passed away at the age of 82. On the artist’s Facebook page, his label confirmed the sad news.

Cohen’s manager Robert Kory added: “Unmatched in his creativity, insight and crippling candour, Leonard Cohen was a true visionary whose voice will be sorely missed”.

Cohen was born in Westmount, Montreal, Canada on September 21 1934. He studied music and poetry at an early age, eventually attending McGill University.

Queen’s University English professor Robert May says Cohen’s debut collection “Let Us Compare Mythologies” published in 1956 contains some of the work for which the late artist is best known – and numerous poems were written when he still in his teens. It was his second book, The Spice-Box of Earth (McClelland & Stewart), that gained him initial recognition. “Leonard Cohen heads this elite class”.

Living on grant money from the Canadian government and an inheritance from his family, Cohen published in the 1960s the poetry collections “The Spice-Box of Earth” and “Flowers for Hitler” and novels “The Favourite Game” and “Beautiful Losers“. Whether being wry, sardonic, and wistful, or unflinchingly Romantic, spry and optimistic, Cohen’s most incisive songs – and there were so many – landed with the weight of the Bible and spread their influence with the inevitability of a zeitgeist-capturing underground poem.

Cohen’s name is often mentioned among a small circle of songwriting masters like Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell.

Young and old, Cohen’s fans played some of his best-known songs on their smartphones. Cohen released “Democracy” in 1992, as part of the wholly excellent and seemingly prophetic album “The Future”.

His most famous song, covered hundreds of times, is “Hallelujah” – he has said its unpublished verses are endless, but in its recorded version, it is about the sacred anguish felt by King David as he contemplates the beauty of the forbidden Bathsheba. In 1992 Cohen released its follow-up, The Future, which had dark lyrics and references to political and social unrest.

1994: Cohen retires to a Buddhist monastery on Mount Baldy, California, and in August 1996 is ordained as a Zen monk with the name Jikan, meaning “The Silent One”. He returned to recording in 2001.

Another mourner told Kline that her and her boyfriend’s shared love for Cohen’s music was what brought the couple together.

Cohen released the album You Want It Darker last month.

Ihlen’s relatives say she received Cohen’s letter while she was still fully conscious, just before she died at the end of July. “I intend to live for ever”. He held Juno and Grammy awards, and was named a companion of the Order of Canada in 1991.