If you have studied music, you are familiar with the five-line staff, the most fundamental component of Western musical notation. You may also remember the standard mnemonic for learning the notes on the lines of the treble clef: Every Good Boy Does Fine. I learned this mnemonic as a child, and even then it didn’t sit well with me. For one thing, it expressed a half-truth, at best, if not an outright falsehood. And later, when I’d studied English grammar and usage, I realized that fine, an adjective, was being misused as an adverb. Yet, if I questioned the quality of the mnemonic, I never thought to question the provenance of the musical staff itself. For all I knew, it had existed since time immemorial.

Not so. This basic element of Western notation was in fact the invention of one man: a shy, frail Italian monk named Guido of Arezzo (990-1050). As Stuart Isacoff explains in his book Musical Revolutions, Guido lived in a time when the Latin chants and hymns of the Church were sung in widely disparate ways by the various communities scattered throughout the Papal domain. Partly in an effort to standardize the diverse styles in which church music was being sung, and partly to afford the singers a more efficient means of learning it, Guido devised a method for connecting graphic notation to the physical act of singing.

Graphic representations of music had existed as early as 1400 BCE. But, as Isacoff notes, these were usually no more than markings: “abstract hints” as to how the music should actually be performed. To remedy this situation, Guido created a four-line staff on which note symbols were placed. Analogous to a geographical grid, with its intersecting arcs of longitude and latitude, Guido’s staff became a “map on which any pitch could be measured in relation to another. The higher the placement, the higher the pitch.” What was new about Guido’s system was the “idea of regarding pitches as occupying positions in vertical space.” This allowed the singer to “grasp at a glance the exact melodic distances in a hymn to be sung.” Although singers and musicians now take the staff for granted, as though it were a common piece of furniture, at the time of its creation it was truly revolutionary. However humble and unprepossessing Guido may have been in his private life, he made an enduring contribution to the development of Western music.

Something similar might be said of such major figures as Eihei Dogen (1200-1253), Linji (Jap. Rinzai, d. 895), Shido Bunan (1603-1676),and Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), all of whom made profound contributions to the Zen tradition. In Zen temples and centers around the world, the names of these and scores of other ancestral masters are regularly chanted, slowly and rhythmically, each name followed by an honorific title:

            KAYASHATA SONJA

            KUMORATA SONJA

                        —

            SHIDO BUNAN ZENJI

            DO KYO ETAN ZENJI

            HAKU IN EKAKU ZENJI

In printed form, this litany resembles the list of credits at the end of a movie. As an aural experience, however, the lineage chants can be hypnotic and strangely moving. Echoing in the spacious environs of a darkened Dharma Hall, they create an atmosphere of reverence, gratitude, and mystery.

Zen lineages also figure prominently in the jukai, or “lay ordination” ceremony, in which committed practitioners “receive the precepts.” Newly confirmed practitioners are presented with a “lineage chart” depicting the lineage of a particular sect. Starting with Shakyamuni Buddha and traversing the centuries, these charts graphically dramatize the antiquity and the continuity of a given lineage. The author and Zen teacher Susan Moon, in her book Alive Until You’re Dead, irreverently likens her “lineage paper,” which delineates “ninety-two generations of ancestors who passed the dharma along, from the Buddha down to me,” to an American Kennel Club pedigree. Among other things, the chart certifies the authenticity of the confirmed practitioner, who has taken vows to keep the moral precepts of the Zen tradition.

Looking, this morning, at my own lineage chart, where my name is emblazoned in bright red letters beneath the Ten Precepts and the Rinzai Zen lineage, I am reminded of those family trees that Henry Louis Gates, Jr. presents to his guests on Finding Your Roots. More seriously, I am reminded of Susan Moon’s observation that “we will become ancestors, too.” For good or ill, we will take our places in the lineages of our blood and spiritual descendants. Although our roles will almost certainly not be as pivotal as that of Guido of Arezzo in Western music, neither will they be inconsequential. Passing down our frailties and foibles, our mistakes and misdeeds, as well as whatever kindness and wisdom we have to offer, we will influence the lives of our descendants, who, as Moon prophetically notes, will one day become ancestors themselves. If that thought will not suffice to give us pause—and prompt a little humility—I really don’t know what will.

_______

Stuart Isacoff, Musical Revolutions (Knopf, 2022), Kindle Edition, Lot 190.

Susan Moon, Alive Until You’re Dead: Notes on the Home Stretch (Shambhala, 2022), 37,53-63.

Engraving: Guido of Arezzo (Guido d’Arezzo)

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