Pie Jesu
"Pie Jesu" is a text from the Lacrimosa, a hymn in the sequence "Dies irae," where it is the final couplet. The couplet is often included in musical settings of the Requiem Mass as a motet. The phrase means "pious Jesus" in the vocative.
Popular settings
The settings of the Requiem Mass by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, 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 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.