album notes

Paul’s fourth classical album, Ecce Cor Meum (“Behold My Heart”) is an oratorio in four movements, scored for choir and orchestra. The album’s origin lay in a commission from Magdalen College, Oxford: Paul was asked to compose a piece for the opening of a new concert hall at the college. Following Linda's death in 1998, however, the performance was delayed, eventually premiering in 2001, with a studio recording taking place in 2006. Each of its four movements begins with unaccompanied voices, and the text combines both English and to a lesser degree, Latin. As Paul explained, “Something I found out later, being a complete innocent in the field, was that most people find a text and set it to music, which it would have been very convenient to know that, but I didn’t. So I started writing the music and then putting my own text to it, which is probably completely the wrong way around to do it. It didn’t matter. I suppose, you know, in that respect, it meant that it was a bit less conventional.”

Kate Royal: Soprano
Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Conducted by Gavin Greenaway
London Voices
Chorus Master: Ben Parry
Boys of Magdalen College Choir, Oxford
Boys of King's College Choir, Cambridge
Colm Carey: Organ
Mark Law: Piccolo Trumpet
Executive Producer: Paul McCartney
Producer: John Fraser
Engineer: Arne Akselberg
Assistant Engineers: Sam Okell, Robert Houston, Andrew Dudman
Technical Co-ordination Assistant: Keith Smith
Mastered & edited by Simon Kiln at Abbey Road Studios, London
All tracks published by MPL Communications Ltd.