ABSTRACT
The Ode for Musick was first published on 16 July 1713. In the Works of 1736, the Ode follows a title page designating it in the following terms: ‘ODE | ON | St. CECELIA’s Day, 1708.’ In 1735 Pope told Spence that it ‘was at the request of Mr. Steele’ that he wrote the poem (OAC, I.28; no. 65). However, Pope had been first introduced to Steele by John Caryll only in 1711. In a letter, dated 26 July of that year, Steele wrote to Pope asking him whether he was ‘at Leisure to help Mr Clayton, that is, Me to some words for Musick against Winter’ (Corr., I.131). This was with reference to the opera composer Thomas Clayton (1673–1725), whose concerts took place at the Music Room in York Buildings (see Headnote to ‘Sapho to Phaon’). On 2 August Pope wrote to Caryll saying that he had now received ‘two letters from Mr. Steele, the subject of which is to persuade me to write a musicall interlude to be set next winter by Clayton, whose interest he espouses with great zeal’ and expressing the reluctance he had felt in accepting the comission: ‘The desire I have to gratify Mr Steele has made me consent to his request, tho’ ’tis a task that otherwise I’m not very fond of’ (Corr., I.132). It is possible that Pope had finished work on the poem and sent it to Steele by the winter of 1711: the evidence is a letter dated 6 December 1712, missing but described in a 1920 Tregaskis sale catalogue as referring to ‘the Ode left with Steele last winter’ (Corr., I.165). While it is probable that this correspondence relates to the Ode for Musick, it is not actually certain. The missing letter formed part of a sequence of exchanges about several projects in the winter of 1712–13 for which Steele was soliciting Pope’s contributions and interest; see the letters of 12, 16 and 29 November and 4 December, Corr., I.152–60), concerning The Temple of Fame, which was written by 1712 but not published until 1715, and ‘The Dying Christian to his Soul’, another ‘Ode’ requested by Steele as an item for music, not published until 1730.
