Pie Jesu

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'."Steinberg, Michael. "Gabriel Fauré: Requiem, Op. 48." Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, 131–137.

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, and others. Performed by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it was a certified Silver hit in the UK in 1985.{{cite certification|region=United Kingdom|artist=Sarah Brightman & Paul Miles-Kingston|title=Pie Jesu|id=5101-380-1}}

The couplet is chanted by a group of flagellant monks as a running gag during the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.{{YouTube|title=Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Animated interlude|id=99d9FC168lM}}; {{YouTube|title=Monty Python and the Holy Grail Monks (with subtitles)|id=e4q6eaLn2mY|link=no}}; {{YouTube|title=Monty Python – Holy Hand Grenade (with subtitles)|id=xOrgLj9lOwk|link=no}}. {{retrieved|access-date=23 July 2021}}

The original text, derived from the "Dies irae" sequence, is as follows:{{efn|1=Pie is the vocative of the word pius ("pious", "dutiful to one's parent or God").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 "Jesu" (Iesu in Latin) is the vocative of Jesus/Iesus.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." Requiem is the accusative of requies ("rest"), sometimes mistranslated as "peace", although that would be pacem, as in Dona nobis pacem ("Give us peace").}}

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:

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References

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• {{YouTube|xTf14maKtT8|From Fauré's Requiem}}, Philippe Jaroussky, Orchestre de Paris, Paavo Järvi
• {{YouTube|Vr6ajtA5Otg|From Lloyd Webber's Requiem|link=no}}, Hayley Westenra

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Category:Christian hymns in Latin

Category:Latin religious words and phrases

Category:Songs about Jesus