In 1887, Henry M. Baker of Bow, N.H., wrote to Dartmouth expressing his desire to award prizes for the best original words and the best original music for a "very acceptable Dartmouth song." Although the original contest was set for the following year, it was not until 1894 that the prize for lyrics was awarded to Richard Hovey, class of 1885, for his "Dartmouth Song."
Edwin O. Grover, class of 1894, first published the poem under the title "Men of Dartmouth" in the June 1894 issue of Dartmouth Literary Monthly. Although the wording was slightly different from Hovey's original, the poem appears to have had no trouble winning wide approval.
A suitable and enduring musical setting, however, took many years and many composers to find. Among the composers who tried setting it to music were Addison Andrews '78, whose version appears in the first edition of Dartmouth Songs, published in 1898; Frederic Field Bullard; Marie Wurm, who set a number of Hovey's poems to music; Dartmouth music professor Charles Morse, whose version was sung at the laying of the cornerstone for Webster Hall in 1901; and Louis Benezet, class of 1899, whose setting was performed at the laying of the cornerstone for the new Dartmouth Hall in 1904.
In 1908, Ernest Martin Hopkins, then secretary to Dartmouth president William Jewett Tucker, asked Harry Wellman '07 to attempt a new musical setting for Hovey's poem. Proclaiming himself neither musician nor composer, Wellman nevertheless took the task in hand, and it was his setting that was sung at commencement in 1910. In 1926, on the advice of President Hopkins, "Men of Dartmouth" officially became Dartmouth's alma mater.
With the changeover to coeducation in 1972, the College was urged by students to create a gender-neutral version of the alma mater. Eventually, a version by Charles Hamm, Lynne Gaudet '81, Douglas Wheeler '59, Caroline Luft '89, and Dean Edward Shanahan, was produced, providing eight changes to Hovey's original poem. On May 28, 1988, President James O. Freedman announced these changes to the College. In the commencement program that year, the new version—and only the new version—was printed. The title? Simply "Alma Mater."
- By Barbara Krieger
(Reprinted in part from Miraculously Builded in Our Hearts: A Dartmouth Reader, eds. Edward Connery Lathem and David M. Shribman [UPNE, 2000].)
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