WAISer Anthony Smith former president of Magdalen College Oxford commissioned Sir Paul McCartney to write “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold my heart) to celebrate the opening of the College’s new concert hall. After more than eight (8) years in the making, on Sept. 25, 2006 Paul McCartney’s 4th Classical album was released by EMI Classics
It was performed at the Royal Albert Hall, with the participation of the choirs of Magdalen College and King’s College, Cambridge. From Wikipedia: On 3 May 2007, Paul McCartney was presented with the Best Album Award at the Classical Brits for Ecce Cor Meum, at the Royal Albert Hall. The award was voted for by readers of Classic FM magazine and listeners of Classic FM. The album reached number 2 in the Top Classical Albums charts from the US.[4]
In May 2008 Paul McCartney received an Honorary degree from Yale. His classical work “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold my heart) See Music: McCartney Receives Honorary Degree at Yale (Bienvenido Macario, Philippines/US 05/27/08 6:41 am)
- Magdalen* College and Sir Paul McCartney (Ronald Hilton, US) Monday 10/02/06 4:01 pm) (*pronounced: “Maudlin”)
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=11412&objectTypeId=5662&topicId=1
I was pleased and surprised to see the name of WAISer Anthony Smith in an AP dispatch published in the San Francisco Chronicle. He was president of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1998 to 2005. He commissioned Sir Paul McCartney to write “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold my heart) to celebrate the opening of the College’s new concert hall. It was performed at the Royal Albert Hall, with the participation of the choirs of Magdalen College and King’s College, Cambridge. It is Sir Paul’s fourth classical album. The good news surprised me because Sir Paul is none other than the former Beatle. I regarded the Beatles as nice pop singers, but I have no appreciation of pop music, which seems silly in comparison with the folk music of earlier periods. I understood that the Beatles had no formal music training. Can Anthony Smith or someone explain how the Beatle was transformed into a classical composer?
2.) Re: Magdalen College and Sir Paul McCartney (Ronald Hilton, US Tuesday 10/03/06 9:25 am)
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=11421&objectTypeId=5671&topicId=1
I wrote: I was pleased and surprised to see the name of WAISer Anthony Smith in an AP dispatch published in the San Francisco Chronicle. /He was president of Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1998 to 2005. He commissioned Sir Paul McCartney to write “Ecce Cor Meum” (Behold my heart) to celebrate the opening of the College’s new concert hall. It was performed at the Royal Albert Hall, with the participation of the choirs of Magdalen College and King’s College, Cambridge.
3.) Re: Magdalen College and Sir Paul McCartney (Anthony Smith, UK, Tuesday 10/03/06 1:32 pm)
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=11425&objectTypeId=5675&topicId=1
RH: I wrongly assumed that Sir Paul McCartney wrote IT music.
Anthony Smith writes: It is far, very far, from being IT music. It is simply that Sir Paul uses modern IT devices to help him compose the music i.e. write music physically as you use a PC to write text. He writes traditional melodies, not electronic music and beautiful they are. Yes, he was a chorister for a time as a child at Liverpool RC Cathedral. I met him during the 1960s but did not get to know him until “Ecce Cor Meum” was a possibility. But I knew his brother Michael, also a good musician and song composer, who appeared many times on TV programmes I produced in the late 1960s.
4.) The Beatles: Abused angels or devils in disguise?
Ronald Hilton – 12/4/01
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=64119&objectTypeId=58369&topicId=104
5.) Music: McCartney Receives Honorary Degree at Yale (Bienvenido Macario, Philippines/US 05/27/08 6:41 am)
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=21491&objectTypeId=15741&topicId=1
6.) Music: McCartney and Ashby (Tim Ashby, US) Wednesday 06/03/09 11:57 pm)
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=42353&objectTypeId=36603&topicId=92
7.) UK’s NHS (National Health Service)(Anthony Smith, -UK, 04/02/12 2:57 pm) https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&objectType=post&o=69053&objectTypeId=62937&topicId=199
I am inspired to respond to Nigel Jones’s outburst (2 April) about the UK’s National Health Service, one of the chief and most highly cherished instruments of our British democracy. The constantly evolving NHS is currently an area of hot political contention in Britain, between parties that agree in fact on the fundamental goal of making it even better rather than dismantling it through privatization–many of its services have always, of course, been supplied through private companies. In lieu of a detailed response, however, I see that Wikipedia has a good factual entry on the subject of comparative health care, which I append below:
“Health care in the United States is provided by many separate legal entities. Health care facilities are largely owned and operated by the private sector. Health insurance is now primarily provided by the government in the public sector, with 60-65% of healthcare provision and spending coming from programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Veterans Health Administration.
“The US Census Bureau reported that a record 50.7 million residents (which includes 9.9 million non-citizens) or 16.7% of the population were uninsured in 2009. More money per person is spent on health care in the USA than in any other nation in the world, and a greater percentage of total income in the nation is spent on health care in the USA than in any United Nations member state except for East Timor. Although not all people are insured, the USA has the third highest public healthcare expenditure per capita, because of the high cost of medical care in the country. A 2001 study in five states found that medical debt contributed to 46.2% of all personal bankruptcies and in 2007, 62.1% of filers for bankruptcies claimed high medical expenses. Since then, health costs and the numbers of uninsured and underinsured have increased.
“Active debate about health care reform in the United States concerns questions of a right to health care, access, fairness, efficiency, cost, choice, value, and quality. Some have argued that the system does not deliver equivalent value for the money spent. The USA pays twice as much yet lags behind other wealthy nations in such measures as infant mortality and life expectancy. Currently, the USA has a higher infant mortality rate than most of the world’s industrialized nations. In the United States life expectancy is 42nd in the world, after some other industrialized nations, lagging the other nations of the G5 (Japan, France, Germany, UK, USA) and just after Chile (35th) and Cuba (37th).
“Life expectancy at birth in the USA is 50th in the world, below most developed nations and some developing nations. It is below the average life expectancy for the European Union. The World Health Organization (WHO), in 2000, ranked the US health care system as the highest in cost, first in responsiveness, 37th in overall performance, and 72nd by overall level of health (among 191 member nations included in the study). The Commonwealth Fund ranked the United States last in the quality of health care among similar countries, and notes US care costs the most.
“The USA is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not ensure that all citizens have coverage (i.e., some kind of private or public health insurance). In 2004, the Institute of Medicine report observed “lack of health insurance causes roughly 18,000 unnecessary deaths every year in the United States, while a 2009 Harvard study estimated that 44,800 excess deaths occurred annually due to lack of health insurance.”
JE comments: It is a joy to hear from veteran WAISer Anthony Smith, who reports that he is doing well. I wonder if our recent mention of Magdalen College, Oxford, where Anthony served as President prior to his retirement, has telepathically inspired him to contact us. All I know is, when I have the good fortune to meet Tony personally, I won’t mispronounce “Magdalen” (“Maudlin”).
One of my favorite Ronald Hilton postings is from 3 October 2006, where he describes the genesis of Sir Paul McCartney’s oratory, Ecce Cor Meum. Anthony Smith is the person who commissioned it. Read the story here:
https://waisworld.org/go.jsp?id=02a&o=11421
Great to hear from you, Anthony!
