"Pie Jesu" (/ˈpiː.eɪ ˈjeɪ.zuː, -suː/ PEE-ay-YAY-zu; original Latin: "Pie Iesu" /ˈpi.e ˈje.su/) is a text from the final couplet of the hymn "Dies irae", and is often included in musical settings of the Requiem Mass as a motet. The phrase means "pious Jesus" in the vocative.
Popular settings
editThe 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'."[1]
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.[2]
In popular culture
editThe couplet is chanted by a group of flagellant monks as a running gag during the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.[3]
Text
editThe original text, derived from the "Dies irae" sequence, is as follows:[a]
Pie Jesu Domine, | Pious Lord Jesus, |
Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem text
editAndrew Lloyd Webber, in his Requiem, combined the text of the "Pie Jesu" with the version of the "Agnus Dei" from the Tridentine Requiem Mass:
Pie Jesu, (×4) | Pious Jesus, |
Notes and references
edit- ^ Pie is the vocative of the word pius ("pious", "dutiful to one's parent or God").[4] "Jesu" (Iesu in Latin) is the vocative of Jesus/Iesus.[5] Requiem is the accusative of requies ("rest"), sometimes mistranslated as "peace", although that would be pacem, as in Dona nobis pacem ("Give us peace").
References