Talk:Serenade

Serenade and serenata

Oxford list 'serenade' (a song) and 'serenata' (a short opera) separately. I think this would be preferable here as well. --Kleinzach 08:59, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

This is definitely true. Both types are completely different musical genres. Just compare Mozarts Haffner Serenade with his serenatas Ascanio in Alba or Il sogno di Scipione. I have recently written the Serenata article for the german wikipedia and now cannot link it to the english version. Please fix it. --Rodomonte (talk) 09:00, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Except that "serenata" is the more usual spelling in Italian of the word rendered in French as sérénade (and via that language, in English as "serenade"). Michael Talbot points out in his New Grove article "Serenata" that, by the second half of the 18th century, "the rise of the instrumental serenade made the continued use of ‘serenata’ potentially misleading," while Hubert Unverricht and Cliff Eisen, in the article "Serenade" in the same reference book, state plainly that the spelling "serenata" is simply the Italian form of the same word, and go on to describe briefly the cantata-like form without making a distinction in spelling. The OED similarly gives two senses for the word "serenata", the second being "A piece of instrumental music, developed from the orchestral suite, and usually composed of a march, and a minuet interposed between two movements of another kind." It would probably make sense to split out the section on the 16th-17th-century vocal form and create from it a new English-Wikipedia article (as you have done on the German Wikipedia), though it will be important to make very clear to readers that the difference in spelling does not make a conclusive distinction.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 18:20, 18 September 2014 (UTC)

Changes

I hope it's okay that I made some changes to this article. First and foremost, I reformatted the article so that it was divided into different musical eras, not just one massive, overall section. I also supplemented some material within the paragraphs. Also, I added a Form section which briefly describes the general makeup of a Serenade. Finally, I split the Notes section and added some more links.--Pstrongw (talk) 14:52, 16 December 2009 (UTC)