The Probert Encyclopaedia of Music

SERENADE

A serenade is evening music, especially that sung or played in the open air. Originally it was the song of a troubadour wooing a girl beneath her window (and is used as such, mockingly, in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Don Giovanni). Later it was expanded into a form of agreeable, entertaining music for instrumental groups, and became hardly distinguishable from a cassation or divevtimento. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a number of serenades, including the Haffner, for a Salzburg wedding, and the name has been attached to works by Richard Strauss, Stravinsky, and Copland.
Research Serenade