Pie Jesu

Popular settings

The settings of the Requiem Mass by Marc-Antoine Charpentier (H.234, H.263, H.269, H.427), Luigi Cherubini, Antonin Dvořák, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, John Rutter, Karl Jenkins, Kim André Arnesen and Fredrik Sixten include a "Pie Jesu" as an independent movement. Decidedly, the best known is the "Pie Jesu" from Fauré's Requiem. Camille Saint-Saëns, who died in 1921, said of Fauré's "Pie Jesu": "Just as Mozart's is the only 'Ave verum corpus', this is the only 'Pie Jesu'."

Andrew Lloyd Webber's setting of "Pie Jesu" in his Requiem (1985) has also become well known and has been widely recorded, including by Sarah Brightman, Charlotte Church, Jackie Evancho, Sissel Kyrkjebø, Ylvis, Marie Osmond, Anna Netrebko, Lucy Thomas with her sister Martha Thomas, Malakai Bayoh and others. Performed by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it was a certified Silver hit in the UK in 1985.

In popular culture

The couplet is chanted by a group of flagellant monks as a running gag during the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Text

The original text, derived from the "Dies irae" sequence, is as follows:

Andrew Lloyd Webber's ''Requiem'' text

Andrew Lloyd Webber, in his Requiem, combined the text of the "Pie Jesu" with the version of the "Agnus Dei" from the Tridentine Requiem Mass:

References

1. [[Michael Steinberg (music critic). Steinberg, Michael]]. "Gabriel Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48." ''Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide.'' Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 131–137.
2. "Pie Jesu".
3. "''Monty Python and the Holy Grail''. Animated interlude".
4. Champlin, John Denison. [https://books.google.com/books?id=t8VZAAAAYAAJ&q=%22pius+meaning+dutiful+to+one's+parent%22 ''The New Champlin Cyclopedia for Young Folks'']. Holt, 1924, p. 403
5. White, William. [https://books.google.com/books?id=v2AEAAAAYAAJ&q=%22we+do+in+Charle-s,+Jame-s,+Juliu-s,+and+Thoma-s%22 ''Notes and Queries'']. Oxford University Press, 1904, p. 490. "In Greek, which did not possess the sound ''sh'', but substituted ''s'', and rejected the Semitic evanescent gutturals, ''Yēshū''(''ā'') became ''Yēsū' '' (''Ἰησοῦ''), in the nominative case ''Yēsū'∙s'' (''Ἰησοῦς''). In Latin these were written in Roman letters ''Iesu'', nominative ''Iesu∙s''. In Old French this became in the nominative case ''Jésus''; in the regimen or oblique case ''Jésu''. Middle English adopted the stem-form Jesu, the regular form of the name down to the time of the Renascence. It then became the fashion to restore the Latin ''∙s'' of the nominative case, ''Jesu∙s'', and to use the nominative form also for the objective and oblique cases, just as we do in Charle∙s, Jame∙s, Juliu∙s, and Thoma∙s. Very generally, however, the vocative remained Jesu, as in Latin and in Middle English, and this is still usual in hymns."