Customer Reviews

Paul McCartney: Ecce Cor Meum

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1 star:		(7)

 

 

This choral and classical instrumental gem is profoundly spiritual and captivating. The lyrics yearn with idealism, the choirs are celestial and the orchestra is equally uplifting and replete with pathos. The Interlude track is a melancholic marvel relating to the sad death of Linda McCartney. I was shocked to hear how much more advanced Paul McCartney has become in the realm of classical music. Ecce Cor Meum is vastly superior to Liverpool Oratorio and it surpasses the respectable Standing Stone. I am a rock music fan but I listened to Ecce Cor Meum four consectutive times last night. After the third play I was convinced that this CD's grandeur, pathos and spirituality combined to make it a masterpiece. The lyrics are sanctifying as they accentuate that our innate nature is laden with a universal love that we need to rediscover. McCartney's spirituality is profound. Paul is a Sir, a Beatle, a great vocalist, a dynamic bass player, a painter, a vegetarian, an animal rights activist and now he is a bona fide Classical composer.

After years traveling down his Long & Winding Road that led to this collection, it was well worth the wait. Paul McCartney has turned his travails into triumph; his challenges into championships.

Paul has proved to be a musical peer among many, including Tony Bennett with whom he does an excellent duet; those well established in choral work such as Walton, Bax and others of their caliber.

Never able to dodge that Beatle influence which has long become part of so many other songs and forms of music, Paul appears to embrace it. He plays Beatle songs at all of his concerts and even this vastly different collection retains just a hint of that old Beatle magic that made Paul a household name.

By that I mean that Paul remains true to his musical muse; his songs are identified by his warm, ballad-like style and soft sentimentality that softens the cynical edges of an otherwise jaded world. He breathes fresh life and animus into this music; it is this coupled with his own style that pull it off effectively.

One thing that struck me about this poignant collection is the strong spiritual aspect. Paul McCartney maintains an optimistic outlook while beseeching people to look to their goodness within.

This is a very serious collection. This is, I believe, Paul McCartney's core values and beliefs. It is this seeking, finding and reinforcing the goodness in ourselves and others that makes this so unique.

This is a collection that you will want to have. It is very soothing and some of the songs make me think of the Christmas Mass.

Paul McCartney is like his own 1967 classic - getting better all the time. This work is proof positive of that.

This is an incredible album...one of love, love lost, and spirituality.
It's incredibly beautiful in composition and production.
Paul continues to outdo himself, and shows what a truly masterful sonfwriter he is. Movement II (Gratia) is my favorite. I play it continually, and it never fails to hit a spiritual nerve in my body.
This is an excellent album by the world's foremost songwriter.
Long live Sir Paul!

Those who have kept up with Saturday Night Live over the years will recall any number of comedic skits that worked very well as two- or three-minute shorts on the show, but when expanded into full-length feature films were tedious and ineffective.

That's a good comparison for McCartney's oratorio here. There are passages that are quite effective, and nicely done; here and there, for thirty seconds or so at a time, you think hey, this isn't bad. The problem is that this piece lasts a full hour, and like those SNL skits it just doesn't hold up when expanded to these proportions. There's no formal or structural integrity, no large-scale dramatic rise and fall, or ebb and flow. Rather, we have the simple song forms with which McCartney is familiar (AABA, etc.) expanded ad absurdum (AAAAAAABBBBAAAAAA, etc.).

One of my convictions about lengthy musical works is that they must justify their own duration. There has to be a really good and self-evident reason for piece of music to last twenty, forty, or sixty minutes, for it is entirely possible to present a thoroughly satisfying musical experience (to present multiple musical ideas, develop them, bring a sense of resolution towards the end, and close things out) inside of three or four minutes. This can be seen in the best popular songwriting, in a great deal of jazz improvisation, in classical miniatures such as the Chopin etudes and nocturnes for piano, etc. Ecce Cor Meum wholly fails on this count, then: there is simply no good reason for it to last so long, no skillful development of ideas or meaningful build and then release of dramatic tension.

Furthermore, while there are indeed some effective passages here, a great deal of the writing is also flat and artless. McCartney does not and cannot write counterpoint, which is the essence of choral music; instead, Ecce Cor Meum utilizes a sort of a lead singer/backup singers construction, like what you'd expect to find in a pop song. Occasionally there's a little call and response, a few instances of two- or three-part voice leading, but otherwise the choral and orchestral textures are simplistic and empty. It's such a wasted opportunity to gather a choir of hundreds of voices, as McCartney does here, only to have them all singing pretty much the same thing at the same time.

I really don't mean to be too harsh. There's nothing WRONG with this music. It isn't unpleasant. But in tackling a form like the oratorio, McCartney is placing himself in direct comparison to history's master composers and great musical geniuses, and unfortunately he falls far, far short of them. For all its pleasant moments this is vapid, uneventful music.

It's pretty, it's sincere, and in parts it's actually quite moving. But like Red Rose Speedway, Wings At The Speed of sound, or Driving Rain - - don't read the lyrics. It doesn't quite translate as an equivalent to the Brahms Requiem.
Lyrics run along the lines of

Where could we run to/Where would we hide
Where would we run to/Where would we hide
Where would we run to - hide?
Our love/our love
strengthen our love/strengthen our love
our love/our love.

Worse still -

We may find a trace / of this state of grace
In the saddest face
Something is there

How the rivers flow
We may never know
But it goes to show
Something is there

The man has always been a great melodist, but remember, he also gave us obladi - oblada - life goes on bra
as well as you say yes, I say no, you say stop, and I say go go go. Oh. You say goodbye and I say hello.

Still, it's his melodies that have caused me to line my record, and later CD, shelves with everything from McCartney, to all the live mujlti disc sets, right up to Chaos and Confusion.

If you can get past the text, you may still enjoy this. It's probably as close as we'll ever get to seeing into McCartney's soul. Which is substantial.

Paul did an excellent job on this beautiful music and I do not say that because I am a fan. I love classical music, I put classical on to calm my nerves or to bring myself closer to the powers that be. This is excellent stuff. I will listen to this CD the rest of my life. I only have about 5 of those lifetime titles, this is one of them.

I must admit that I was skeptical. Not a fan of Sir Paul's other "classical" works, I thought "Oh, here we go again." But I must say, this one has won me over. Yes, it's like a requiem mass and to me reminiscent of Arvo Part, but there is a power here that is not derivative and seems all Paul. Remember first listening to the orchestral build in "A Day In The Life"? This moves me in a similar way only with much more complexity. Visualise, if you will, journeying through interstellar space when you hear this and yeah man, you'll get what Paul's up to...cosmic love power, check it out.

Among his classical efforts, Paul McCartney has turned in his most fully realized effort yet. He is light years away from the orchestrations that seemed so simplistic with A LEAF, or even long passages of LIVERPOOL ORATORIO, and this is definitively not Classical Lite. That's what the years, the travails will do for you in more serious music. It ain't the years , it's the mileage, and that's true in his pop/rock efforts as well. The McCartney of FLOWERS IN THE DIRT and all that has followed bears no resemblance to the lead guy of Wings or Red Rose Speedway. Thank God.

McCartney's is a pastoral England when it comes to the Classics. This choral work would stand well along side the works of William Walton, Arnold Bax, Ralph Vaughn Williams, and that's something to be especially proud of. McCartney has said of his famous pop career that what he was proudest of was that the works of The Beatles were always about Love, Peace, Understanding. That remians the core theme of this work. The lyrics are what you would expect from Paul: direct entreaties to the heart filled with compassion and a sentimentality that seems to have left the cynical world of soundbites and political liars. Like the Dalai Lhama or Tich Nhat Hanh, whse encomiums seem too simplistic to answer the world's pains, Mc Cartney directs his thoughts and prayers to what is essentailly human about us all, and he refuses to give up hope and faith.
There's something to be said for that. It's not a silly love song. This is the heart that he and in his view all of us would want each other to behold. He gets that across more convincingly than anyone this side of Arvo Part.
The choir and the orchestration are perfect through out. McCartney, a choirboy reject, seems to want to still prove to whomever canned him that he could do it. And does he ever! You'll find this a disc you will return to often, especially when your mind needs a rest. I'd like to hope that McCartney will now aim for more adventurous efforts, using perhaps either Taverner or Maxwell Davies as iconic beams. We shall see. In any case, be it in his rock mode or classical efforts, Paul McCartney is in the midst of a terrific golden age. His writing, performing and his vision have never been better, more to the point of what our souls need. Well done.

My old harmony teacher once remarked, "You can't throw away the rules unless you know which rules you're throwing away. Not surprisingliy, this is the case with "Ecce Cor Meum." When tunesmithing, most writing is done intuitively. In other words, the "how" of it comes from exposure to countless examples of popular/rock music. It's done by osmosis and most (but by no means all) pop tunes are tweaked into existence.

In the case of "serious" music, though, it is like any work of art. It is done by understanding the medium and understanding the progress of the art itself.

McCartney's attempt at a serious work falls short in most every respect. It is dull and colorless with occasional tender moments. An extended passage involving the oboe was particularly poignant. Otherwise the repetitiveness of the work makes for rather difficult sustained listening.

In his program notes, the composer seemed to think that lack of formal training in music, even with notation, was an asset rather than a liability. We beg to differ. The understanding of the dynamics of harmony, rhythm and melody in the course of a large work is as important to the composer as color and its use is to a painter.

Having to write 40-45 minutes of orchestral and choral music is a whole lot different than 32 bars of, say, "Michelle" or "Will You Still Love Me When I'm 64?" (Which of course we always will, Paul!)

Even a master composer like George Gershwin was limited, albeit much more successful, in his attempts at larger works. That said, there is hope of McCartney. I'd like to see more from his pen.

If you're a classical buff you will not like it as it lacks technicality, lyrics and sophistication.

However, take it and enjoy it for what it is - a personal insight to Sir Paul's inner music and melody. It is very well produced, has some great and captivating moments, and above all is pleasant and relaxing.