Andrew Lloyd Webber’s *Pie Jesu*, from his 1985 *Requiem*, reimagines the traditional Latin prayer as a luminous soprano duet. Written for the Latin Mass text—“Pie Jesu, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona eis requiem”—it blends ethereal melody with lush harmonic shifts, rising from tender pleas to a radiant climax before dissolving into serene resolution. Premiered at St. Thomas Church, New York, with Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it became an instant classic, later adapted by André Rieu in Maastricht with Kimmy Skota and Mirusia Louwerse. Rieu’s orchestral warmth amplifies Webber’s romantic lyricism, preserving the piece’s devotional core while framing it for popular reverence.
Hey Folks. This is a sad day for me. It is a day of mourning, a day of grief, a day of loss. Intransigentia as she is known here, my partner in life, crime, and marriage for the last 15 years and I are parting ways today. The house is sold, the belongings divvyed, the transition… moving… only forward now.
Way back when, in a different time, we were neophyte singers and we really enjoyed singing together. This was the first duet we ever sang together, it was extra special because she to arranged the counter-melody and scored the music for us to make it a duet. Her mother, a master pianist and accompanist played with us. The Bach Gounod arrangement of Ave Maria is staggeringly beautiful, and I shall always remember singing it with her as one of the most treasured shared moments of our existence together.
If nothing else, we are the memories we make with the people we love. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to share this musical experience with her, it means so much more now that things have changed so much.
So, I’m sharing this with all of you now, as a quasi memorial to what once was and the beauty and happiness that was once found there.
Life is change, whether we like it or not. Our life transition has been in the works since the beginning of the year, and I’ve been slowly digesting and processing the new context of what life is going to look like. Ultimately we’re both going to be okay and stuff so don’t worry about us.
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