Described by one commentator as "the most ambitious effort of the composer's early maturity," the Symphonic Ode was commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra for its 50th anniversary. Copland composed the Ode between August 1927 and September 1929, and it was given its first performance in Boston by the Boston Symphony under Sergey Koussevitzky on February 19, 1932. In 1955, Copland revised the work, cutting down the number of instruments needed, simplifying its rhythms, and generally making the Ode easier to play. That revision, commissioned by the Boston Symphony and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation for the Orchestra's 75th anniversary, was once again premiered by the Boston Symphony, this time under Charles Munch, on February 3, 1956.

The Boston Symphony and Koussevitzky had performed Copland's Symphony (No. 1) for Organ and Orchestra in 1925, and that same year Koussevitzky secured for Copland a commission to write another work for them, the Music for the Theatre. So when the request for the Boston Symphony's 50th anniversary concert came along, Copland enthusiastically accepted, setting out to write, as he put it, "something grand and dramatic."

The work that resulted featured a massive orchestra (including eight French horns, five trumpets, three trombones and two tubas), and was extremely complicated. Koussevitzky had intended that the Ode receive its premiere in February 1931, but when he got down to rehearsals with the orchestra, they only managed to get through three bars of music in an hour. It was such a difficult situation that Koussevitzky asked Copland himself to come to Boston and take over the rehearsals. Copland did so—one of his first experiences as a conductor—and found Koussevitzky's words born out. So Copland decided to rebar the score to make it easier for the musicians, but this took so long that the intended 1931 premiere had to be moved back a year.

The composer has described the Symphonic Ode as being in ABCBD form—the B sections in a fast tempo, the others slow. The main thematic material derives from a short phrase from Copland's Nocturne for violin and piano (1926). The purposeful, declamatory A section builds into the faster, jazz-inflected B section which both looks back to Copland's jazzy works like Music for the Theatre and the Piano Concerto (1926), and forward to Copland's popular ballets of the late 1930s and 1940s. A hymn-like melody and another passage of what Copland called "exultant, dramatic declamation" leads into a free reprise of the jazzy B, and the concluding D section combines elements of both A and B into a monumental conclusion. Although it has never been very popular, Copland always thought highly of the Symphonic Ode. As he once wrote, "The Ode resembles me at the time, full of ideas and ideals, introspective and serious, but still showing touches of youthful jazz days, reflections of a Jewish heritage, remnants of Paris (Boulanger's la grande ligne), influences of Mahler (the orchestration) and Stravinsky (motor rhythms)."

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