Pie Jesu

 Classical Music / Sacred Music

"Pie Jesu" (original Latin: "Pie Iesu") 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".  A motet is  mainly a vocal musical composition of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music.

The settings of the Requiem Mass by 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. Considered the best known is the "Pie Jesu" from Fauré's Requiem. 

Camille Saint-Saëns 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 1985 Requiem has become well-known and has been widely recorded, including by Sarah Brightman and Charlotte Church, among others. Performed by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it was a certified Silver hit in the UK in 1985.  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. 

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. In the 1997 film version of the Anime Dog of Flanders, Pie Jesu is heard in the final scene, set to an original composition by Taro Iwashiro

 

Featured Video: 

Sarah Brightman's incredible performance as she is joined by young Connar Burrowes to sing "Pie Jesu" in front of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's episode of 'This is Your Life' in 1994. "Pie Jesu" is said to be one of Brightman's love songs. It was featured on the album 'Requiem,' a beautiful recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber's masterwork that went on to win a Grammy Award for best classical composition in 1986.

 

Video Credit:

Connar Burrowes and Sarah Brightman sing 'Pie Jesu'. YouTube, uploaded by Robert Glasby. Accesed April 18, 2010. 

 

Resource:

Pie Jesu. en.wikipedia.org

 

 

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