The 1950s were an extraordinarily productive decade for the young Leonard Bernstein with his notable musicals, the music for the film On the Waterfront (1954), nominated for the Academy Award for “Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.” During the summer of 1954, Bernstein focused on two major compositions: his operetta-styled musical Candide, and a new orchestral piece featuring solo violin. Conceived originally as a violin concerto, the work took shape as a lyrical Serenade for solo violin, harp, string orchestra and percussion in five movements. The composer thus fulfilled two commitments: to the Koussevitzky Foundation ( 1951) and a piece for violin and and the promise of a piece for violin and orchestra forhis friend, the eminent violinist, Isaac Stern. Bernstein dedicated the Serenade to the memory of his mentor, Serge Koussevitzky, and to Koussevitzky’s first wife, Natalie.
He titled it Symposium – his idea is consonant with the increased interest in antiquity and mythology in a number of his contemporaries (suffice it to mention the names of Igor Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso). Bernstein himself stresses that Serenade, like many of his works, is related to literature and is the result of a rereading of one of Plato’s shortest dialogues on love, the Symposium, a series of speeches in praise of Eros delivered by some of Athens’ great thinkers at a symposium. Like a dialogue in which each successive speaker takes as his starting point what the previous speaker has said, the music introduces new ideas which it links melodically, each new variation developing elements from the previous one.
On August 8, 1954, the day after completing his score, Bernstein wrote the following descriptions for each movement as a suggested series of “guideposts” for the listener indicating the content and role of each topic in the most detail:
- Phaedrus; Pausanias (Lento; Allegro marcato). Phaedrus opens the symposium with a lyrical oration in praise of Eros, the god of love. (Fugato, begun by the solo violin.) Pausanias continues by describing the duality of the lover as compared with the beloved. This is expressed in a classical sonata-allegro, based on the material of the opening fugato.
- Aristophanes (Allegretto). Aristophanes does not play the role of clown in this dialogue, but instead that of the bedtime-storyteller, invoking the fairy-tale mythology of love. The atmosphere is one of quiet charm.
III. Eryximachus (Presto). The physician speaks of bodily harmony as a scientific model for the workings of love-patterns. This is an extremely short fugato-scherzo, born of a blend of mystery and humor.
- Agathon (Adagio). Perhaps the most moving speech of the dialogue, Agathon’s panegyric embraces all aspects of love’s powers, charms and functions. This movement is a simple three-part song.
- Socrates; Alcibiades (Molto tenuto; Allegro molto vivace). Socrates describes his visit to the seer Diotima, quoting her speech on the demonology of love.
Despite this correlation between the music and the text, it is possible that the composer introduced the Platonic connection later in the compositional process.( Also incorporated into Serenade are several quotations from some of Bernstein’s solo piano pieces which he named “Five Anniversaries,” short works dedicated to close friends as birthday gifts or memorial tributes.). Bernstein biographer Humphrey Burton suggests that the work “can also be seen as a portrait of Bernstein himself: grand and noble in the first movement, childlike in the second, exuberant and playful in the third, serenely calm and gentle in the fourth, a doom-laden prophet, and then a jazzy iconoclast in the finale.”
Isaac Stern premiered Serenade at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, September 1954, with the composer conducting the Orchestra Del Teatro La Fenice.The work is among Bernstein’s most popular compositions, along with the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and the Overture to Candide, and has been performed by a number of world-renowned violinists and orchestras.