A serenade (Italian: Serenata, evening music) is a vocal or instrumental music piece. They originated in the sixteenth century as a musical salute to a loved one. From the eighteenth century, the serenade, a multi-part instrumental genre. She is light in style, and intended as evening music.
In the eighteenth century was given the name serenade a new meaning. It was an instrumental piece of music in three or four parts, in shape similar to a small Symphony.  however, in terms of style is lighter and shorter, more akin to the dance suite. A serenade is generally a musical composition and/or performance in honor of someone, and often meant to be performed in the open air in a occupation blazers or strings. The serenade comes both in programmatic salon music as in cantatas and short hofopera's.
A well-known example is Eine kleine Nachtmusik by Mozart. His opera Don Giovanni contains a serenade. Other composers of serenades are Johannes Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Hugo Wolf, Jan Gerard Palm and from the late-Romantic school include Richard Strauss, Max Reger and Jean Sibelius.Well known is the Franz Schubert's Ständchen : Leise flehen meine Lieder "Durch zu dir that night; In den stillen Hain hernieder, Liebchen, komm zu mir!