"Serenad"
Orchestral song by Jean Sibelius
The composer (c. 1895)
Catalogue	JS 168
Text	Serenad by Stagnelius[1]
Language	Swedish
Composed	c. 1894–1895
Duration	4.5 mins.[1]
Premiere
Date	17 April 1895 (1895-04-17)[1]
Location	Helsinki, Grand Duchy of Finland
Conductor	Jean Sibelius
Performers	Abraham Ojanperä (baritone) Helsinki Philharmonic Society

"Serenad" (in English: "Serenade"; in Finnish: "Serenadi"),^[a] JS 168, is an art song for baritone and orchestra written in c. 1894–1895^[2] by the Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The piece, which is a setting of the eponymous poem by the Swedish poet Erik Johan Stagnelius, premiered on 17 April in Helsinki, with Sibelius conducting the Helsinki Philharmonic Society; the soloist was the Finnish baritone Abraham Ojanperä.^[1]

The "Serenad", however, remained unpublished and was never performed again in Sibelius's lifetime, apparently because he wished to revise it (however, a planned revision in 1910 never materialized).^[3] In 1984, however, the composer's estate agreed to permit its recording.^[4] The song was first published in Volume VIII/1 of the Jean Sibelius Works (JSW) critical edition,^[1] an ongoing collaborative project involving the National Library of Finland, the German firm of Breitkopf & Härtel, and the Sibelius Society of Finland.^[1]

The Finnish baritone Abraham Ojanperä (left) premiered Sibelius's "Serenad" on 17 April 1895 in Helsinki (ad right).

The "Serenad" is scored for the following instruments and voices,^[1] organized by family (vocalists, woodwinds, brass, and strings):

• Baritone
• 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, and 2 bassoons
• 4 horns
• Violins (I and II), violas, cellos, and double basses

The British musicologist Robert Layton has praised the "Serenad" as "something of a discovery ... it has the greatest delicacy and atmosphere, and its whispering pizzicato strings are wonderfully suggestive". He concludes by labeling it as "one of Sibelius's very greatest and most subtle songs both in its use of rhythm and color".^[4] The Sibelius biographer Andrew Barnett characterizes the "Serenad" as a "nocturnal lament for [one's] lost love", the chromaticism of which illustrates the extent to which still in the mid-1890s, Sibelius was under Wagner's spell.^[3]

The Finnish conductor Jorma Panula and the Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, joined by the Finnish baritone Jorma Hynninen, made the world premiere studio recording of the "Serenad" in 1984 for BIS.^[1] The table below lists this and other commercially available recordings: