Joost: You found Francis again in a charity shop in London, it seems. Do you think you
found him or he found you?
[Music]
Joost: My name is Joost and I'm the co-curator of the exhibition 'Saint Francis of
Assisi' at the National Gallery, in which we are standing right now.
Arun: I'm Arun Ghosh. I'm a clarinetist and composer and I set Saint Francis of Assisi's work,
'The Canticle of the Sun', to music last year. It's beautiful to be here in the
National Gallery surrounded by the most amazing pieces of art as part of this
exhibition and also the sounds of birdsong. It is great to be here.
Joost: Arun, we're standing here in front of Zurbarán's 'Saint Francis In Meditation',
one of the great masterpieces of the Spanish 17th century, and one of the most
loved works in the National Gallery's collection. But before we look at that,
can you tell us a little bit more about 'The Canticle of the Sun' and how it came
to you?
Arun: Saint Francis came up with 'The Canticle of the Sun'
towards the end of his life and he sang it into existence.
In 'The Canticle of the Sun' he's singing in praise of the sun, the moon
and the stars, so the astral kind of things, of Earth, of wind, water.
It's in praise of nature and then in the second half he's talking about
faith, peace, devotion, and also death. And when I heard about 'The Canticle of the Sun'
I just knew I needed to put it to music. The way I found out about it
was very special. I mean, Saint Francis has always been important to me
growing up. We had Irish neighbours.
They were very, kind of, they were Catholic and cared about Saint Francis
very much. 'Lord Make Me An Instrument Of Your Peace' was displayed in our house as
well. My father was a big fan of Saint Francis so I've always been
drawn to him. I discovered a very lovely book
by coincidence looking in Tottenham Court Road. I was looking for Dante's
'Inferno', yeah, and I found heaven and peace instead. It's
depictions of Saint Francis in art and when I was reading about that, it talked
about 'The Canticle of the Sun' and how he also sang one of the last stanzas,
'Death' right on his deathbed. When I read about it I just thought, 'I need
to know more about this'. When he was singing, talking in praise of nature and
particularly the sun, I connected to it into terms of Indian music, in terms of
Sufi music, qawwali, also in terms of spiritual jazz such as the music of
Sun Ra. And all of that just came to me, and I just thought, I really
need to set this. And then when I came to read the words and found how beautiful
they were, both in the English translation and later when I read them
in the original Umbrian, I understood that these were songs already.
So the Umbrian text just led itself to so beautifully, to be set
to music.
Joost: Because not many people know that, probably, but Saint Francis, during
his lifetime, if you read the sources, it seems he was always singing, he was
always making music. 'The Canticle of the Sun'
appears to be one of the very first texts that was written in the Italian
language, in the Umbrian dialect, so not in Latin. It seems to have been a text
that was accessible and available to people, but it has always existed as a
text after Saint Francis died because the music got lost. So you had the words
but not the music. How did you start thinking about that?
Arun: The way I compose,
especially if I'm setting songs, is I'll sit at the piano and I'll read the words,
and I'll almost just try and sing them and play them. Especially in the Umbrian,
you can really feel the flow, the meter of it, and melody just naturally came
out of it it. I mean, I suppose my way into music is through
melody. Yeah. It just really felt that melody
just brought these words out. Of course then
each one of the different sections, whether it's the sun, the moon and the
stars, water, fire, all of those, I turned all of those into different songs, and so
the nature of, the style of the music was how I also then felt about that
thematically. Fire is almost like this raw energy punk song, you know. Whereas
water has this kind of Marly-an, almost desert music feel, where I
imagined kind of people walking for water,
as my family also did in India. The purity of water is
really expressed in this flowing kind of West African rhythm. Other things
almost come more from the gospel or church
philosophy, in terms of the music, and other things are just almost my sense
of melody. And then I set it for a spiritual jazz ensemble, with the bass, drums
and of course vocals, and it was lovely to work with two
wonderful singers.
[Music]
Joost: But here we are, actually standing in front of a painting, an image of Saint
Francis, or at least an image of how someone in the 17th century imagined
Saint Francis. When you look at this and you think back about 'The Canticle of the
Sun' and the music you wrote, how does that shape your thinking about Saint Francis?
Arun: When I look at this painting of 'Saint Francis In Meditation', I feel I
understand him in prayer. He spent his life in prayer, in meditation. The fact
that we can't see his eyes, towards the end of his life he was blind. He wasn't
necessarily writing, he wasn't necessarily seeing, he was imagining and
conceiving and feeling. And yet the face is drawn upwards to heaven, to God, it
feels. The mouth is open, in wonder or in, kind of, middle of an incantation. The
humility and the purity of who he was comes through in terms of
his habit. The hands clasped in prayer, you know, it's all there. And then
it feels like the skull is obviously so central to the to the painting. We
have, kind of, Saint Francis depicted with a skull. It's that approaching
death, it's that sense of the of how life is just temporary. And it feels that
rather than having it at a distance or at his side, he's clasping it.
Joost: He's embracing it.
Arun: He's embracing it and accepting it. That as a concept
has given me a huge amount of comfort, you know,
in recent years through,
through COVID, because, and then bereavement,
I lost my father at the start of COVID. The canticle, writing 'The Canticle of the
Sun' and specifically writing 'Death', which in some ways is the climax of
how we set the work, I really feel that I've accepted, excuse me, I really feel
that I've accepted death as well, and through that acceptance has come what I
feel is an understanding of life, and an enjoyment of life, and an
acceptance of who I am and who we are. And and I suppose this is really
embodied in a painting like this, that really almost captures who Saint
Francis was, you know.
Joost: Works of art can do that. They can capture these
feelings and these emotions, in music and in images. Francis wrote 'The Canticle of
the Sun' during the last two years of his life, when he was in very ill health. He
knew he was approaching death and yet, like you said, he talks about death as
"Sister Death" as if he already has a sort of a loving relationship with this
very difficult subject. Someone who wrote about this exhibition
said the words that, you don't have to believe to believe in Saint Francis, and
I think there's a truth in this. He seems to unite many different people from many
different backgrounds.
Arun: I think so, I mean, I think, thinking about my father who
grew up in a rural village in West Bengal
and came to the UK in the 60s, for him to have been introduced to Saint
Francis through kind of being here in this
country, and for him to really kind of have had a strong resonance with him
totally sums that up, what you're saying. I mean, I think the message is
universal, it clearly is. For me, I do have a faith and I
think it really resonates for me. But I think for people who don't necessarily
have the same sort of faith, I think still they are
a part of the world and they are part of nature. And I mean, what's there not to
like, really? I think everything he says is very deep and powerful and pure.
Joost: May I end on something perhaps slightly provocative?
You found Francis again in a charity shop in London, it seems. Do you think you
found him, or he found you?
Arun: This certainly came to me, I think. Whilst I didn't
necessarily know about all these amazing works of art, I had thought about
'Lord Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Peace' a lot, and I thought about 'Sermon to
The Birds'. Those things, probably from school days, you
know, have stayed with me. So I think that he's always just kind of been there, and
then, just at the right moment, when maybe I was ready to sort of write
something new, to express something different,
this came. I think, kind of, as you said, it was written 800 years ago, next
year is the 800th anniversary of the writing of it. I really enjoy performing
it very much. So I'm glad. I'm glad it all happened.
Joost: So am I. Thank you, Arun.
Arun: Alright, my pleasure.
[Music]