Glory to God Ken Canedo, Bob Hurd	(Based on 2 votes)

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Lyrics

Refrain
Glory to God, glory to God,
glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth.
Glory to God, glory to God,
glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth.
1. Lord God, heavenly King,
almighty God and Father,
we worship you, we give you thanks,
we praise you for your glory.
2. Lord Jesus Christ,
only Son of the Father,
Lord God, Lamb of God,
you take away the sin of the world:
have mercy on us;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father:
receive our prayer.
3. For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ, with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father.
Final Refrain
Glory to God, glory to God,
glory to God in the highest,
and peace to his people on earth. (Repeat)
Amen, amen, amen.

Music © 1998, Ken Canedo and Bob Hurd. Published by OCP. All rights reserved.

Artist Reflection

Bob Hurd did not like Gloria. No, not a girl, but the part of the Mass called "Glory to God" in English. Back in the 1970s when we were just starting to write liturgical music at St. John's College in Camarillo, California, Bob and I composed separately. He wrote a lovely soft-rock Mass setting called Mass to Honor Our Lord of the Poor. I composed the hard-rockin' Mass for Troubled Times and Mass of the Cosmic Christ. My Masses had Glorias. Bob's did not.

At the time, Bob felt the text of the Glory to God was too long and too unwieldy to set to music. I relished the opportunity. I studied the Glorias of the great Mass settings of that time: Mass for Christian Unity by Jan Vermulst or Mass of the Assembly by Harry Lojewski. I noticed a certain three-part structure to this prayer of praise. My early Glorias were through-composed, i.e., music was composed verbatim for the official text. The St. Louis Jesuits had not yet composed their breakthrough antiphonal Glorias, with a Responsorial-style refrain after each verse.

Fast forward over twenty years later. OCP was coming out with the new Spirit & Song songbook for youth and young adults, and Mass of Glory was chosen to be the anchor Mass setting. One problem: We needed a Glory to God! When Bob and I composed Mass of Glory together in the early 1990s we did not include a Gloria. So now, after years of avoiding the issue, my old friend had to finally hunker down and write one!

I had a refrain that had been simmering in my "unused" files for a while. After some tweaking, Bob and I came up with the current catchy version. Then Bob went straight to work on setting the three verses to music. We presented it to OCP. They liked it, recorded it, and published it. And still, Bob wondered if people would take to singing this long prayer.

While some liturgists might question the need for the Glory to God — it allegedly makes the beginning of Mass "top heavy" with songs — there is no denying the exultation and solemnity that this prayer brings to Sunday liturgy. Absent during Advent and Lent, the return of the Gloria on Christmas Eve and Holy Thursday is a powerful expression of the joy those days deserve, a joy extended throughout their corresponding seasons of Christmas and Easter. It's the song of the angels, — "Gloria in excelsis Deo!" — poetically extrapolated to give praise to the mystery of the Trinity: God the Father's glory and God the Son's saving love, in union with the Holy Spirit. The Glory to God is a classic prayer text that any composer should feel honored and humbled to set to music.

After we completed Mass of Glory, Bob went on to write a half dozen settings of the Glory to God for various other Mass projects. Turns out he likes Gloria after all!

- Ken Canedo