Pie Jesu / Fauré, Gabriel

One of the most famous parts of the Requiem by Fauré is the soprano aria Pie Jesu.

At its simplest, ‘Pie Jesu’ is just two lines of text from the final couplet of the Latin hymn ‘Dies irae’:
Pie Jesu Domine,
Dona eis requiem (sempiternam).

Which translates as:
Merciful Jesus
Grant them rest (everlasting)

When Gabriel Fauré fell in love with the couplet and used it in his Requiem (1887 – 1890), his friend Camille Saint-Saëns said: “Just as Mozart’s is the only ‘Ave verum corpus’, this is the only ‘Pie Jesu’”.