(1) A love song addressed to a woman, usually containing the theme of an invitation to a rendezvous. The serenade, which developed out of the serain or evening song of the Provençal troubadours, was popular among the southern Romance peoples. Fixed verse forms of the serenade did not develop. The singer usually performed a serenade under his beloved’s window, accompanying himself on the lute, mandolin, or guitar. Eventually, the serenade was used in operas, including Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. It also became a genre of vocal chamber music (for example, works by Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Grieg, M. I. Glinka, A. S. Dargomyzhskii, and P. I. Tchaikovsky).
(2) An instrumental piece, usually for a soloist and more rarely for an ensemble, with the same features as the vocal serenade. Instrumental serenades were composed by Mendelssohn, A. Dvořak, and A. S. Arenskii.
(3) A cyclic work composed for an instrumental ensemble and similar to the cassation, divertimento, and nocturne. Until the end of the 18th century, compositions of this type were written in honor of a particular person and designed for open-air performance. Unlike the symphony, the cyclic serenade usually consists of a minimum of seven or eight movements. It combines movements typical of the symphony and the suite. Among the composers who have written cyclic serenades are Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, H. Wolf, Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, and Glazunov.