Paul McCartney: Ecce Cor Meum
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Music CD Cover
Composer: Paul McCartneyConductor: Gavin Greenaway
Performer: David Theodore
Orchestra: Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields
Performer: Colm Carey
Performer: Mark Law
Performer: Kate Royal
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2006-09-26
Music Label: EMI Classics
Soundtracks:
- Ecce Cor Meum: I. Spiritus
- Ecce Cor Meum: II. Gratia
- Ecce Cor Meum: Interlude (Lament)
- Ecce Cor Meum: III. Musica
- Ecce Cor Meum: IV. Ecce Cor Meum
Free Music Notes for Paul McCartney: Ecce Cor Meum
Free Music Review: Are we listening to the same piece of music?
Hit: 5 Stars
How can I be listening to the same piece of music that another reviewer here finds "vapid" and "uneventful"? That is the question I ask myself, and the only answer I've been able to think of is, perhaps, that the other reviewer is looking for Hamlet set to music. Five acts of increasing tension released by a bloodbath in the fifth act. That would certainly be a fun and perhaps worthwhile musical project, but Hamlet's agony has little to do with what McCartney is trying to do in this oratorio. McCartney's trying to live, not die.
This work, as anyone who considers the lyrics, much less the music, will recognize, is a set of meditations on matters spiritual, material, personal, and musical. It is a highly confessional and personal look at the heart and mind that make Paul McCartney tick. The lyrics consider the questions of how to find light and spirit and love in your life. The answer is that you pray, and praying loudly and demandingly is okay with McCartney. There is spirit in the world, and you can connect with it. If your connection is sound, it will bring you all the treasures of life and love and successful communication of your heart. Ecce Cor Meum is full of climaxes, and excitement, and tempo and mood changes. There are contrapuntal passages liberally strewed throughout the work, and there are gorgeous instrumental colors, and lonely voices plaintively singing their way out of gloom and darkness and despair into light and joy and forward motion. It does not have architectural structure, but it is in constant spiritual and musical motion.
"Let the good that surrounds us help us to always care." "Take love away and we are ruined." Lead us "into the light of your sweet song." "There in the future we may be apart. Here in my music I show you my heart."
The piece is undoubtedly colored by the death of Linda McCartney in the middle of its composition, and what McCartney learned of finding the light again, and how to react to making mistakes while looking for the light. The personal credo expressed in this composition has been tested by the worst that could happen to this particular composer, and he uses his own dark night of the soul to strengthen his personal philosophy of love, light, music, and positive action.
What it is not is uneventful and vapid, unless you think that love doesn't exist, that there is no such thing as spirit, and that music is primarily for entertainment. Music can save your soul, McCartney sings, and his soloist and choirs sing convincingly. The music reaches, and surges, and batters down the gates of heaven on earth.
I can easily understand those who have reported that they listen to the piece over and over again. It's heartening, it's exciting, it's seriously melodic and wildly expressive. Ecce Cor Meum is just one man's testimony to what's important in life, but the man in question is one of the most talented and inventive musicians around.
Paul McCartney: Ecce Cor Meum Poster
Limited Deluxe Version packaged in 60 page hardback book with metallic foil embossing. The book includes notes, lyrics and extra photos. Originally commissioned by Magdalen College Oxford to commemorate the 550th anniversary of the foundation of the College in 1998, Ecce Cor Meum (Behold My Heart) is an oratorio written for Magdalen College Choir by Sir Paul Mccartney. It is scored for choir and orchestra and there are four movements, each of which begins with unaccompanied voices and the text combines both English and Latin. This is McCartney's fourth album on the EMI Classics label - and it has been a labour of love with more than eight years in the making.Paul McCartney's new "classical" oratorio is called Ecce Cor Meum, which translates as "Behold My Heart." The idealistic texts, also by McCartney, are meditations on goodness, spirituality, peace, and love, and are well served by the pretty, Romantic melodies; the long choral and orchestral sections flow one into the next. The Interlude (composed after the death of his wife, Linda), with its lovely oboe solo, is simple and moving. The music builds throughout to an emotional climax and the entrance of the organ later in the work--beautifully played and handsomely recorded--is quite remarkable. This is a far more advanced work than 1991's Liverpool Oratorio: better orchestrated, more through-composed. No, it's not the last word in compositional sophistication, but it has many beautiful moments, and McCartney's legions of fans will need to own it. --Robert Levine
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