Pie Jesu

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Pie Jesu is the title given to musical settings of the final couplet of the Dies Irae, normally a part of the Requiem Mass. Those by Luigi Cherubini, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, John Rutter, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Fredrik Sixten include a Pie Jesu as an independent movement. Of all these, by far the best known is the Pie Jesu from Fauré's Requiem^{[citation needed]}; Camille Saint-Saëns said of it, "just as Mozart's is the only Ave verum corpus, this is the only Pie Jesu."^[1]

Pie Jesu Domine,

Dona eis requiem.

(O sweet Lord Jesus,

Grant them rest)

Webber adds the lyrics of the Agnus Dei to it. Cherubini adds the word sempiternam ("sempiternal", a graded expression of aeternam, "eternal") at the end, making it to dona eis requiem sempiternam ("grant them sempiternal rest").

Pie (the vocative of the word pius) is conventionally translated as "sweet" here, but normally means "dutiful", "godly" or "kind". [1]

[edit] Popular culture

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The movie Monty Python and The Holy Grail had a scene with a group of flagellant monks chanting this hymn.
Joseph McManners on his debut album In Dreams has recorded the Rutter version.
Blind Guardian on their second album Follow the Blind (1989) the first song called: Inquisition, is a song in which this text is repeated 5 times for 40 seconds.
Moe Koffman on his album Music of the Night with Doug Riley arranging an orchestra of 10 violins, 6 violas, 4 cellos, 5 flutes, 6 oboes, 3 clarinets, a harp, and a choir of 12 women.
Young contestant Andrew Johnston sang Andrew Lloyd Webber's version on the television show Britain's Got Talent in 2008.