Glory be to your name

These verses reflect, albeit dimly, the wonderful ancient creedal hymn attributed to St Ambrose, known as the Te Deum. Many people (myself included) are familiar with the translation in the Anglican 1662 Book of Common Prayer, where it begins: 'We praise thee O God'. There I came to appreciate its special character, encapsulating as it does essential themes of the Christian faith and turning them into praise and prayer. So it was with much hesitation that I yielded to a request to attempt a reworking into a shortened metrical version, set to the chorale in Camille Saint-Saëns's magnificent organ symphony.

The official blog of the Houston Symphony explains how Saint-Saëns’s composition appears to have been influenced by the Roman Catholic requiem mass. The recurring theme, which reaches new heights in the chorale, is intended to signify the 'dies irae' - 'day of wrath', Judgment Day. At this climax the organ makes a thunderous entry in a major key, and - in Saint-Saëns’s own words - the dies irae theme is “totally transformed”.

Here the blog's author comments, 'The message is clear: death has been somehow redeemed, transfigured, going on to compare the final return of the major key to the archangel Michael 'casting the Devil out of heaven'. In a similar way the Te Deum theme is at once both searching in its call for wholehearted response and triumphant in its welcome into eternal life for all believers. Thus it may be found to come unexpectedly close to Saint-Saëns's intended goal.

To match the phrasing of Saint-Saëns's score, the lyrics are written in anapaestic trimeters (2-3-3-1). The music is transposed from the original key of C down to F to bring it into normal vocal range.

In November 2024, when the text was accepted for publication on the Jubilate website, a few slight adjustments were required. By this time a friend, a retired minister near Paris, had introduced us to Philippe Kaminski, a member of his church who took up the challenge of translating this hymn into French - no mean feat as the line-length and stresses are unusual and French poetry has conventions that have long been dropped in common parlance. We have found his contribution, "Glorifié sois-tu Dieu souverain", a very welcome addition. I have now changed my first line to complement this - which also enabled me to avoid "God, we praise you", the opening words of Christopher Idle's stirring hymn on the Te Deum set to Arthur Sullivan's LUX EOI.