Genesis, Vol. V — The Binding (Original Score)

Drawn From takes a text you already own and gives it to another sense. This volume is Genesis 20 through 24 as a score: sixteen instrumental cues written to be played while the chapters are read. Each takes the span the music asks for, and here that runs from a whole chapter of a servant at a well down to two verses in which a father is told to kill his son.

Side A is a promise arriving and then being asked for back. Abraham tells the sister-lie a second time, having learned nothing. Then Isaac is born and the whole side lifts — the cue is called Laughter because that is what his name means and because there is finally something to laugh about. Four tracks later the same child is walking up a mountain carrying the wood.

We gave the binding three cues and no more. Two verses for the command, six for the journey, six for the mountain. The journey is the longest of the three on purpose: nothing happens across those three days except that a man keeps walking, and the score had to sit inside that with him. There is no relief written into it, because there is none in the text until the last possible verse.

Side B is what a life looks like after that. Sarah dies in two verses and is mourned. Abraham, who was promised an entire country, spends a whole chapter buying one field with a cave in it so he has somewhere to put her — the first thing he ever owns, and it is a grave. That transaction gets more music than the near-sacrifice did. It is not a mistake.

Then a servant, an errand, and a girl at a well who offers to water ten camels. The record ends quietly, with a marriage arranged by strangers and one line that is the whole point of the volume: he loved her, and was comforted after his mother's death.

Play it in order. It was built in order.

Composed by

Brian McGauley

Label

McGauley Records