The story of the binding of Isaac is a more sentimental story that is told in the Bible. What I learned from our textbook is that it isn’t as often people explore distressing and troubling times in the Bible through music, with the story of Isaac being one of the few. The interesting part of turning this story into music is, there wasn’t just one musical creation from the story- many artists included their version of this story. With many different artists producing musical creations based from the same story, there are many different approaches to the creations. The many different approaches make this discussion so unique to me.
Joan Baez produces a song with a focus on the lyrics and vocals and little focus on musical instruments. Roxanna Panufnik produces an instrumental version without the inclusion of lyrics, and Leonard Cohen offers a song with equal music to vocal attributes. There can be things said about each individual song and personal preferences to differenciate between which could be considered “better”, but the biggest takeaway of this to me is, how the same story can be produced through multiple different approaches, all excibiting different emotions to the listener. An instrumental piece can be opened to interpretation based on who is listening and what they might even be going through in life at the moment. Songs with lyrics as a main focus don’t allow as much room for interpretation, however, we are often times grasping at the main idea the artists wants the audience to understand. All three songs were inspired from the same story and by listening to every version, the audience can have a better understanding of the story of Isaac. It was interesting to hear all three versions and be able to compare the three based on musical elements they may or may not contain.