Leonard Bernstein loved a good dinner party. The larger-than-life composer and conductor was a favorite guest of the movers and shakers of mid-20th-century New York and was often seen, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other, partying not only with fellow musicians, but also artists, writers, academics, and politicians. He was a charming extrovert, but also a deep thinker who spent a lifetime studying and debating issues related to music, art, society, humanity, and his own personality. Perhaps this is why he was drawn to Plato’s philosophical text titled Symposium. In the short work, written around 370 BC, Plato imagines a friendly, post-dinner gathering of a group of learned men in Athens, each of whom is tasked with delivering a speech about some aspect of love. The men extol the virtue of love between two men and compare it with male/female attraction. They discuss physical attraction and contrast it with what we now call “Platonic love.” Bernstein first read Symposium as a student at Harvard, but he returned to it while on vacation in 1951, shortly before he married Felicia Montealegre. Perhaps, as a bisexual man preparing to marry a woman, he was searching for reassurance that love can take many forms. Perhaps it was mere coincidence that he chose to re-read Plato’s text at that point in his life. Regardless, Plato’s retelling of an imaginary wine-fueled discussion between friends, exploring various aspects of love, made an impact on Bernstein—enough of an impact that he chose the text as the inspiration for a violin concerto he began composing two years later.
Begun in late 1953 and completed in August 1954, Bernstein’s Serenade fulfilled a commission from the Koussevitzky Foundation, as well as a promise he had made to his friend, violinist Isaac Stern, to compose a work for violin and orchestra. The first performance of the Serenade took place in Venice, Italy, on September 12, 1954, with Stern as soloist. At that time Bernstein noted, “[My] music, like the dialogue, is a series of related statements in praise of love, and generally follows the Platonic form through the succession of speakers at a banquet.” The attendees at Plato’s imagined symposium were Phaedrus (a wealthy intellectual), Eryximachus (a physician), Aristophanes (the comic playwright), Agathon (the party’s host), Pausanias (Agathon’s lover), and Socrates (Plato’s teacher). Bernstein devotes all or part of a movement of the concerto to each attendee. Originally titled simply Symposium, Bernstein was encouraged to change the title to Serenade for fear that audiences would find “symposium” too academic or off-putting. He later regretted that decision, remarking in 1986, “I wish I had retained the title so people would know what it is based on … It’s one of Plato’s shortest dialogues and it’s on the subject of love. It’s seven speeches, at a banquet, after-dinner speeches so to speak. By Aristophanes, by Agathon, by Socrates and himself … it’s really a love piece.”
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:
I. Phaedrus; Pausanias (Lento; Allegro marcato): Phaedrus opens the symposium with a lyrical oration in praise of Eros, the god of love. 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.
II. 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 the doctor (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.
IV. 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.
V. Socrates—Alcibiades (Molto tenuto; Allegro molto vivace): Socrates describes his visit to the seer Diotima, quoting her speech on the demonology of love. Love as a daemon is Socrates’ image for the profundity of love; and his seniority adds to the feeling of didactic soberness in an otherwise pleasant and convivial after-dinner discussion. This is a slow introduction of greater weight than any of the preceding movements, and serves as a highly developed reprise of the middle section of the Agathon movement, thus suggesting a hidden sonata-form. The famous interruption by Alcibiades and his band of drunken revelers ushers in the Allegro, which is an extended rondo ranging in spirit from agitation through jig-like dance music to joyful celebration. If there is a hint of jazz in the celebration, I hope it will not be taken as anachronistic Greek party-music, but rather the natural expression of a contemporary American composer imbued with the spirit of that timeless dinner party.
For 21st-century concertgoers who may know Bernstein best through his scores to West Side Story, Candide, On the Waterfront, or On the Town, the Serenade may be a revelation—a window into the genius and deep well of talent that was Bernstein. His extraordinary ability to speak so fluently in so many musical languages sets him apart as among the most gifted composers in history, and a dinner guest whose intellect and charm continue to inspire, long after the party has ended.
Program notes by © Betsy Hudson Traba 2025