The Generations

A genealogy is a kind of music. Genesis 5 is a chapter that most readers skim. It is a list of names: Adam begat Seth, Seth begat Enos, Enos begat Cainan, and on through Mahalaleel and Jared and Enoch and Methuselah and Lamech to Noah. Each name is given a lifespan, the lifespan is paid in years, and the line moves down the page. The chapter is, in literary terms, almost nothing. It is in *musical* terms that the chapter starts to mean something. A genealogy is the same phrase, said again, with a different name in it. We took this seriously. The piece is built on a single melodic figure that returns ten times across its length. Each return is a generation. Each return carries the same melodic line, but voiced differently: a different instrument, a different register, a different color in the harmony. The melodic identity is preserved. The voice carrying it is not. This is what a genealogy actually does. It carries something forward by handing it to someone new. The lifespans in chapter five are inhuman by modern reading. Adam, nine hundred and thirty years. Seth, nine hundred and twelve. Methuselah, the famous one, nine hundred and sixty-nine. We did not try to score the lifespans. We scored the *line*. The piece does not get longer because the lifespans get longer; the piece moves at the pace of names being handed down. Each return is a name being said. Each silence between returns is a generation taking its breath. The chapter ends with Noah, and the next chapter has not happened yet. The piece ends the same way. The final return of the melodic figure does not resolve. The harmony wants to close and is not allowed to. This is faithful to the text. Genesis 5 hands the reader to Genesis 6 mid-sentence. *And Noah was five hundred years old: and Noah begat Shem, Ham, and Japheth.* That is the closing line. It is not an ending. It is a handoff. The piece is a handoff too. The line goes forward. Whoever you are, listening, the line goes forward.

Composed, arranged, mixed, and mastered by

Brian McGauley · McGauley Records

Inspired by

Genesis 5:1–32, King James Version

Companion to

Drawn from Scripture: Genesis, Chapter 5 (Drawn From Publishing)

Released

MMXXVI · V · X