During my tenure as composer-in-residence with St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble (1992 through 1996), I began writing works that referenced popular music of the 1940’s and 50’s. This was a continuing exploration of writing “music about music”, an idea that came to me from Mahler by way of Henze. In these works I also began to refine an approach to harmonization that I will call “functional sonority”, an idea that came to me from Wagner: I employ a specific collection of sonorities much in the same way a composer of functionally tonal music uses a specific collection of chords.

Just prior to the Serenade, I composed the Quartet for Low Strings (1992), which made extensive use of harmonies and melodic motives from Billy Holiday’s album “Lady in Satin”. I said in my notes for that work that I certainly was not trying to arrange Billy Holiday songs for string quartet (and after hearing the work no one doubted me). Rather, that work, like the “Serenade”, was much more an exploration of the way the music of that time and style resonates in my memory when I am not listening to it. The Serenade is less directly referential to a specific performer than the Quartet but still makes its roots known.