In with the Odes (1869)
In 1869 the very first edition of the Carmina Princetonia published individual Class Odes written by three of the most recent graduating classes (1866, ’67, and ’69). These soon grew into a peculiar musical genre of their own.
Some Class Odes came complete with original music, others were set to existing melodies. The lyrics tended to be flowery and formulaic, solemn and self-regarding. Their stilted form may well have been partly modeled on ancient Greek & Latin odes that undergrads studied as part of a classical education.
The Class Odes were a variation on an earlier tradition of singing a “parting ode” at graduation. When six such songs were collected in Songs of Old Nassau (1859), each one was titled simply “Ode”. None of their lyrics made any mention of which class had sung them. The only chronological clues were the numerals printed after each composer’s name (seniors from ’54 to ‘59).
Adding class numerals to the title (“’69 Class Ode”) seems to have been something of a rebranding move by the first Carmina’s editors. Some student songsmiths then also began including numerals in their lyrics (“Long live glorious Sixty-nine!” “Good old Seventy-two!” “Here’s honor to Seventy-three!”)
Class Odes and similar songs proliferated at Princeton over the next two decades. The Carmina’s second edition in 1873 already sported seven numbered Odes (from ’67 thru ’73) plus “’73’s Last Greeting”. It also displayed five generic Parting Songs, plus “The Senior’s Graduation Song” and the “Senior’s Farewell”— each a sentimental reflection on leaving college life behind.
The Class Odes’ lyrics were largely interchangeable with senior-year Parting Songs. They waxed nostalgic about friendships soon to be sundered, and braced for “the battle field of life” out in the wider world (“’66 Class Ode”). Oddly abstract, they sang of “the happy past” on campus (“’69 Class Ode”) without actually citing many particulars of the life the class had enjoyed there.
Out with the Odes (1890)
By the late 1880s, a couple decades’ worth of Odes had stacked up in the Carmina’s pages. In 1890 the editorial board (possibly displaying the heavy hand of Moses Taylor Pyne 1877) peremptorily “omitted . . . the long series of Class Odes which burdened the earlier editions.” Ditto the Parting Songs.
Seniors did keep on writing Class Odes for several more decades, and they continued to get published serially in the Nassau Herald yearbook. Singing a Class Ode remained part of the annual Class Day exercises up until the mid-1930s, when the custom apparently died out.1
Footnote:
1The last mention of a Class Ode in the Daily Princetonian‘s annual coverage of Class Day activities appeared in the 26 April 1936 issue.
