serenade

Originally, music to be played or sung in the evening, especially for courting. The term is now most widely applied to works for full or string orchestra in several movements, which are lighter in style and less ambitious than a symphony.

There are three general categories of serenade in music history. The custom of serenading in this manner began in the Medieval era or Renaissance, and the word "serenade" as commonly used in current English is related to this custom.

2) In the Baroque era, and generally called a Serenata (Italian "serenade"--since this form occurred most frequently in Italy), a serenade was a type of cantata performed outdoors, in the evening, with mixed vocal and instrumental forces. Some composers of this type of serenade include Alessandro Stradella, Alessandro Scarlatti, Johann Joseph Fux, Johann Mattheson, and Antonio Caldara.

3) The most important and prevalent type of serenade in music history is a work for large instrumental ensemble in multiple movements, related to the divertimento, and mainly being composed in the Classical and Romantic periods, though a few examples exist from the 20th century.

The most famous examples of the serenade from the 18th century are undoubtedly the ones by Mozart, which are works in more than four movements, and sometimes as many as ten. The most typical ensemble for a serenade was a wind ensemble augmented with basses and violas: instrumentalists who could stand, since the works were often performed outdoors. Frequently the serenades began and ended with movements of a marchlike character--since the instrumentalists often had to march to and from the place of performance. Famous serenades by Mozart include the Haffner Serenade (which he later reworked as the Haffner Symphony, no.

By the 19th century, the serenade had transformed into a concert work, less associated with outdoor performance for honorary occasions, and composers began to write serenades for other ensembles. The two serenades by Brahms are rather like light symphonies, except that they use an ensemble Mozart would have recognized: a small orchestra without violins. Dvořák, Tchaikovsky, Josef Suk and others wrote serenades for strings only, as did Hugo Wolf, who wrote one for string quartet (the Italian Serenade). Other composes to write serenades in a Romantic style include Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Edward Elgar and Jean Sibelius.

Some examples of serenades in the 20th century include the Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings by Benjamin Britten, the Serenade for piano by Stravinsky, Serenade for baritone and septet Op. 24 by Arnold Schoenberg, and the movement entitled "Serenade" in Shostakovich's last string quartet, No. A 21st century example is Nigel Keay's Serenade for Strings composed in 2002. ISBN 0-674-61525-5 Articles "Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart", "Serenade," "Serenata," in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed.