Walter Piston's Serenata for Orchestra is an orchestral suite or miniature symphony written in 1956.
Piston composed the Serenata in 1956, on commission for the Louisville Orchestra,[1] and is dedicated to conductor Robert Whitney, who led the work's premiere on October 25, 1956.
The outer movements of the Serenata are in D major, and the overall form resembles a miniature symphony lasting only twelve minutes.
This, the title, and certain melodic gestures make this composition more Mozartean than any of Piston's neoclassical works from the 1930s, though it remains further from 18th-century styles than neoclassical works of Poulenc, Prokofiev, or Stravinsky.
The middle movement is dominated by a long-lined tune, and the work closes with a high-spirited, strutting finale.