Serenade to Music

Serenade to Music is a work by Ralph Vaughan Williams for 16 vocal soloists and orchestra, composed in 1938. The text is an adaptation of the discussion about music and the music of the spheres in Act V, Scene 1 of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Vaughan Williams later arranged the piece into versions for chorus and orchestra and solo violin and orchestra. It is approximately 13 minutes in duration.

Vaughan Williams wrote the piece as a tribute to the conductor Sir Henry Wood to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Wood's first concert. The solo parts were composed specifically for the voices of sixteen eminent British singers chosen by Wood and the composer. In some parts of the work, the soloists sing together as a "choir," sometimes in as many as twelve parts; in others, each soloist is allotted a solo (some soloists get multiple solos). The published score places the initials of each soloist next to his or her lines.

Wood conducted the first performance at his jubilee concert at the Royal Albert Hall on 5 October 1938. The orchestra comprised players from three London orchestras – the London Symphony Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The soloists were:

Sergei Rachmaninoff played in the first half of the concert as soloist in his Second Piano Concerto; when he heard the Serenade from his place in the audience, he was so overcome by the beauty of the music that he wept.

On 15 October 1938, Wood made the first recording (with the same soloists and the BBC Symphony Orchestra) at the HMV Abbey Road Studio No. 1. Vaughan Williams and HMV donated copyright fees received from the initial record sales to the Henry Wood Jubilee Fund, which was established to endow London hospital beds for British orchestral musicians.

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