ode - Ode in Continental Europe, English ode, Ode in music

A lyric poem, usually of some length and formal complexity. The form of the ode is not prescribed, but determined in each case by the theme, subject, and situation. Pindar in Greek, Horace in Latin, Milton and Keats in English, and Ronsard, Leopaldi, Schiller, and Claudel were notable practitioners.

Ode (Classical Greek: ὠδὴ) is a form of stately and elaborate lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three parts - the strophe, the antistrophe and the epode but different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode exist. On the other hand, the choir-song, in which the poet spoke for himself, but always supported, or interpreted, by a chorus, led up to what is now known as ode proper. It was Alcman, as is supposed, who first gave to his poems a strophic arrangement, and the strophe has come to be essential to an ode. Stesichorus, Ibycus and Simonides of Ceos led the way to the two great masters of ode among the ancients, Pindar and Bacchylides.

It is probable that the Greek odes gradually lost their musical character; The ode, as it was practised by the Romans, returned to the personally lyrical form of the Lesbian lyrists.

Ode in Continental Europe

The earliest modern writer to perceive the value of the antique ode was Ronsard, who attempted with as much energy as he could exercise to recover the fire and volume of Pindar; The poets of the Pleiad recognized in the ode one of the forms of verse with which French prosody should be enriched, but they went too far in their use of Greek words crudely introduced.

Early in the 19th century the form was resumed, and we have the odes composed between 1817 and 1824 by Victor Hugo, the philosophical and religious odes of Lamartine, and the brilliant Odes funambulesques of Theodore de Banville (1857).

The golden age of German ode, both of the Pindaric and the Horatian varieties, is associated with the late 18th century and such writers as Klopstock and Schiller, whose An die Freude (Ode to Joy) inspired the final movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.

The German ode inspired first Russian odes, written by Mikhail Lomonosov, notably Morning Meditation on the Greatness of God and Evening Meditation on the Greatness of God on the occasion of the Northern Lights (1742-44). His ode On God, often regarded as the greatest piece of 18th-century Russian poetry, was 15 times translated into French and 8 times into German during the poet's lifetime.

English ode

The initial model for English odes was Horace, who used the form to write meditative lyrics on various themes. Marvell, in his Horation Ode on Cromwell's Return from Ireland, used a simple and regular stanza (aabb, two four-foot lines followed by two three-foot lines) modelled on Horace, while Cowley wrote "Pindarick" odes which had irregular patterns of line lengths and rhyme schemes, though they were iambic.

With Pindar's metre being better understood in the 18th century, the fashion for Pindaric odes faded, though there are notable "actual" Pindaric odes by Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy and The Bard. The Pindarick of Cowley was revived around 1800 by Wordsworth for one of his very finest poems, the Intimations of Immortality ode; Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, written in fourteen line terza rima stanzas, is a major poem in the form, but perhaps the greatest odes of the 19th century were written by Keats. One major exception is the fourth verse of the poem For the Fallen by Laurence Binyon which is often known as "The ode to the fallen" or more simply as "The Ode".

Ode in music

A musical setting of a poetic ode is also known as an ode. Dryden's "Ode on St. Cecilia's Day" was set by Handel, and Schiller's Ode to Joy was used in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Odes to dignitaries were often set also, such as the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne by Handel. Ode To Summer is a song by Welsh Alternative Rock band lostprophets.