Cain and Abel

Two brothers. Two offerings. One regarded, one not regarded. The chapter does not tell us why. It only tells us what happened. This is the asymmetry the piece is built on. *Cain and Abel* is written as a duet between two voices that begin in unison. For the first stretch of the piece, the two voices are indistinguishable. Same line, same register, same weight in the mix. They are brothers in the truest musical sense of the word: two parts of the same arrangement, born of the same hand, given the same purpose. The chapter introduces the asymmetry quietly. *And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering. But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.* No reason is given. No fault is found in either offering on the page. The asymmetry is simply named, and the chapter moves on, and the rest of the story is the weight of being the one who was not regarded. The piece marks this moment by letting one of the two voices begin to bloom. It is given the small ornamental gestures (the grace notes, the breath, the held vibrato) that mark presence in a piece of music. The other voice keeps playing the same line it has always played. Nothing has been taken from it. Nothing has been changed. It is still doing exactly what it was doing in the opening of the piece. But the listener's attention follows the bloom, the way the chapter's attention follows the accepted offering, and the second voice begins to disappear inside the arrangement even though it has not gone anywhere. The piece does not depict the murder. We made that choice early. The chapter is not, finally, about the act. It is about the conditions that made the act possible: the asymmetry of attention, the impossibility of bearing it, the question God puts to Cain (*why is thy countenance fallen?*) and the answer Cain refuses to give. We wrote the piece around the silence that the chapter itself leaves where the act occurs. The track has a held silence inside it, longer than is comfortable, and when the music resumes only one voice is left, alone, playing the line that was the line all along. The closing question of the chapter is *am I my brother's keeper?* The piece ends without answering. So does scripture.

Composed, arranged, mixed, and mastered by

Brian McGauley · McGauley Records

Inspired by

Genesis 4:1–26, King James Version

Companion to

Drawn from Scripture: Genesis, Chapter 4 (Drawn From Publishing)

Released

MMXXVI · V · X