ode

1. A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanzaic structure.
2. 1. A choric song of classical Greece, often accompanied by a dance and performed at a public festival or as part of a drama.
   2. A classical Greek poem modeled on the choric ode and usually having a three-part structure consisting of a strophe, an antistrophe, and an epode.

[French, choric song, from Old French, from Late Latin ōdē, ōda, from Greek aoidē, ōidē, song.]

In classical antiquity, a poem intended to be sung, usually in honour of some special occasion or as part of a play. Some Horatian odes were set to music in medieval court circles and monastery schoolrooms, and in the 1490s Conradus Celtes at Ingolstadt commissioned Petrus Tritonius to compose four-voice illustrations of the 19 poetic metres in Horace's odes. Tritonius's work enjoyed great success and similar German collections were published in the 16th century.

In England between 1660 and 1820 odes were regularly composed for royal occasions, and from 1715 the preparation of odes on the monarch's birthday and the New Year was part of the duties of the poet laureate and the Master of the King's Musick. Blow, Purcell, Handel and Boyce were important composers of court odes. Like the Cecilian odes composed annually (with few exceptions) between 1683 and 1720, and sporadically since then, these works are indistinguishable in structure from the contemporaneous cantata.

ode, an elaborately formal lyric poem, often in the form of a lengthy ceremonious address to a person or abstract entity, always serious and elevated in tone. There are two different classical models: Pindar's Greek choral odes devoted to public praise of athletes (5th century BCE), and Horace's more privately reflective odes in Latin (c. 23–13 BCE). Pindar composed his odes for performance by a chorus, using lines of varying length in a complex three‐part structure of strophe, antistrophe, and epode corresponding to the chorus's dancing movements (see Pindaric), whereas Horace wrote literary odes in regular stanzas. Close English imitations of Pindar, such as Thomas Gray's ‘The Progress of Poesy’ (1754), are rare, but a looser irregular ode with varying lengths of strophes was introduced by Abraham Cowley's ‘Pindarique Odes’ (1656) and followed by John Dryden, William Collins, William Wordsworth (in ‘Ode: Intimations of Immortality’ (1807)), and S. T. Coleridge, among others; this irregular form of ode is sometimes called the Cowleyan ode. Odes in which the same form of stanza is repeated regularly (see homostrophic) are called Horatian odes: in English, these include the celebrated odes of John Keats, notably ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ (both 1820).

Adjective: odic.

For more information on ode, visit Britannica.com.

Ballet-oratorio in two acts with choreography by Massine, libretto by Kochno, music by Nabokov, designs by Pavel Tchelitchev (sets and costumes) and Pierre Charbonnier (projections). Premiered 6 June 1928 by the Ballets Russes de Diaghilev at the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris, with Irina Beliankina and Serge Lifar. The ballet was based on a hymn by the 18th-century Russian court poet Lomonosov which was dedicated to Empress Elizabeth, who ruled Russia from 1741 to 1762. It shows a student's destructive effect on the harmony of nature, represented by a statue which comes to life. The ballet made use of the latest technology, including neon lights and film projections. But despite its revolutionary stage effects, Ode never achieved great popularity and it was quickly dropped from the repertoire.

ode (Gk. ōdē, ‘song’), in Greek or Latin, a lyric poem in stanza form (see STROPHE and TRIAD).

Ode (from Greek ōdē, a poem to be sung, and thus a generic term for the lyric). In condemning the ballade and other medieval formes fixes as ‘épiceries’, Du Bellay recommended in the Défense: ‘Sing me those odes, still unknown to the French muse, with a lute well tuned to the Greek and Roman lyre, and let no sound be without some mark of rare and ancient learning.’ Ronsard's five books of odes (1550-3) draw on the two large strains of odal inspiration: the Pindaric, with its mode of heroic celebration, its monumental triadic structures (strophe, antistrophe, epode), its cultivation of the sublime style, of mythological references, erudite allusion, apostrophes, invocations, and the impassioned public voice; and the Horatian (incorporating the Anacreontic), with its formal and thematic variety, epicurean leanings, quiet pleasure in the rural environment, and cultivation of the commonplace concerns of the private citizen, expressed with a mixture of affection and irony.

As the Pindaric ode developed in France, the tenline isometric structure, the so-called dizain isométrique classique (ababccdeed, usually in octosyllables) favoured by Malherbe became a privileged vehicle for exploring religious and philosophical topoi both in the 17th c. (e.g. Racine, Cantiques spirituels) and in the 18th (e.g. Jean-Baptiste Rousseau, Odes). One still finds this form occasionally in the odes of Lamartine and Hugo, but in very mixed company. The attractions of the dizain lie in its combination of all basic rhyme-schemes (rimes croisées, rimes plates, rimes embrassées); after the forward-moving developmental phase of the first four lines, the strophe reaches a fulcrum, or moment of suspension, at the couplet, before achieving the encompassing finality of the last four lines.

But alongside the Pindaric, the Horatian ode developed a multitude of shorter and often heterometric stanzas. Among these should be mentioned the ‘shortened’ form of the dizain, a sixain rhyming aabccb which often assumed the grander tones of the Pindaric (e.g. J.-B. Rousseau's ‘Sur l'aveuglement des hommes du siècle’), but which equally addressed pastoral and amorous subjects (André Chénier). The lighter ode reached its paroxysm with Banville's Odes funambulesques (1857). Ironically this collection has among its pages, masquerading as odes, precisely those fixed forms (rondeaux, triolets, villanelles) decried by the Pléiade in favour of the ode. [See Versification.]

[Clive Scott]

A kind of poem devoted to the praise of a person, animal, or thing. An ode is usually written in an elevated style and often expresses deep feeling. An example is “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” by John Keats.

A type of lyric or melic verse, usually irregular rather than uniform, generally of considerable length, and sometimes continuous, sometimes divided in accordance with transitions of thought and mood in a complexity of stanzaic forms; it often has varying iambic line lengths with no fixed system of rhyme schemes and is always marked by the rich, intense expression of an elevated thought, often addressed to a praised person or object.

Tutor's tip: Odes were originally meant to be sung.

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This article is about the form of lyrical verse. For other uses, see Ode (disambiguation).

Ode (from the Ancient Greek ὠδή) is a lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode. Different forms such as the homostrophic ode and the irregular ode also exist.

It is most likely that the Greek odes gradually lost their musical character; they were accompanied on the flute, and then declaimed without any music at all. The ode, as it was practiced by the Romans, returned to the personally lyrical form of the Lesbian lyrists. This was exemplified, in the most exquisite way, by Horace and Catullus; the former imitated, and even translated, Alcaeus and Anacreon, the latter was directly inspired by Sappho.

Contents 1 English ode 2 Spanish and Latin American ode 3 Ode in music 4 References

English ode

The initial model for English odes was Horace, who used the form to write meditative lyrics on various themes. The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict form, were the magnificent Epithalamium and Prothalamium of Edmund Spenser.

In the 17th century, the most important original odes in English are those of Abraham Cowley and Andrew Marvell. Marvell, in his Horatian Ode upon Cromwell's Return from Ireland uses a regular form (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. The principle of Cowley's Pindaricks was based on a misunderstanding of Pindar's metrical practice, but was widely imitated, with notable success by John Dryden.

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; irregular odes were also written by Coleridge. Keats and Shelley wrote odes with regular stanza patterns. 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 Keats's Five Great Odes of 1819 which included Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to Psyche, and Ode to Autumn. After Keats, there have been comparatively few major odes in English. 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".

Spanish and Latin American ode

In the Spanish-speaking world, the Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate, Pablo Neruda revived the ode; composing odes to simple and common things that had never been the subject matter of poets before. Many of Neruda’s odes were published in three books, Odas elementales (Elemental Odes) (1954), Nuevis Odas Elementales (New Elemental Odes) (1956) and Navegaciones y regresos (Voyages and Homecomings) (1959). Neruda’s odes have been widely translated and have greatly contributed to the popularity of the ode among students and young poets. Some subjects of his odess included a tomato, a cat, wine,rum, and so on.

Ode in music

A musical setting of a poetic ode is also known as an ode.

Horatian odes were frequently set to music in the 16th century, notably by Ludwig Senfl and Claude Goudimel. In the 17th century Nicholas Brady's Ode to St. Cecilia was set by Purcell. The Ode for St. Cecilia's Day written by Dryden was set twice to music by Handel, as was his Alexander's Feast, or the Power of Music which was also in praise of Saint Cecilia, the patron saint of music and musicians. One of many settings of Schiller's Ode to Joy (An die Freude) forms the crowning choral movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, completed in 1824. Parry's Blest Pair of Sirens, dating from 1887, is a setting of John Milton's ode At a Solemn Musick, and Arthur O'Shaughnessy's well-known Ode was set by Elgar in his The Music Makers, first performed in 1912. Gerald Finzi's Intimations of Immortality is a setting for tenor, chorus, and orchestra of Wordsworth's ode of the same title.

Odes to dignitaries were also often set, such as the Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne by Handel. Byron's Ode to Napoleon Bonaparte was set by Arnold Schoenberg.

References

Gosse, Edmund (1911). "ODE". The Encyclopædia Britanica. Volume XX (11th ed.). New York: The Encyclopædia Britanica Company. pp. 1-2. 

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - ode

Nederlands (Dutch)
ode, lofdicht

Français (French)
n. - ode

Deutsch (German)
n. - Ode

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - (προσωδ., μτφ.) ωδή

Italiano (Italian)
ode

Português (Portuguese)
n. - ode (m), poema (m)

Русский (Russian)
ода

Español (Spanish)
n. - oda

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - ode

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
颂诗, 赋

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 頌詩, 賦

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 송시, 길,도로

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 賦, 頌歌, オード

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) القصيدة الغنائيه‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮שיר-תהילה, אודה, היסטורית: שיר של פנייה שנכתב כדי שיושר‬

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