This week’s selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium.”

Composed in 1954, the Serenade emerged as a result of a combination of factors: Bernstein’s love of classical culture, his effort to embed himself within European civilization, the emotional issues he was personally living with and his wish to write music that reflects serious philosophical ideas that was neither dry nor technical.

By the early 1950s, Bernstein had acquired fame in the United States, having achieved meteoric success following his stepping in for Bruno Walter as conductor of the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1943. He had also written popular works (On the Town, Fancy Free, Wonderful Town).

Bernstein now decided that he wanted to compose a large, intellectually grounded instrumental work that could stand alongside the great European modernist masterpieces and one that would not abandon tonal expressiveness.

Bernstein chose Plato’s Symposium as his inspiration because he was drawn to the notion of love progressing from physical desire toward intellectual and spiritual transcendence. He also saw musical opportunities in the work’s multi-voiced structure—a sequence of speakers, not a single narrative.

The Serenade was commissioned by the Koussevitzky Music Foundation, in memory of Serge Koussevitzky’s wife Natalie. Bernstein’s Serenade premiered in Venice in September 1954, with Isaac Stern as soloist and Bernstein himself conducting the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice.

The choice of solo violin and string orchestra was significant. The violin serves as a single voice moving through a collective discourse--a Socrates moving among and drawing out the banquet guests. Its lyrical, speech-like quality allows it to function almost as a philosophical narrator.

Bernstein’s most original conceptual move was to craft Plato’s speakers onto movements with each one expressing a psychological archetype.

The work’s origin is thus inseparable from Bernstein’s belief that music could serve as a medium for philosophical argumentation without text, relying on gesture, rhythm and tonal tension.

In the piece, the solo violin acts like a speaker or narrator, sometimes leading, sometimes commenting. The orchestra represents the group or the conversation, sometimes supportive, sometimes challenging.

Each movement has a clear emotional identity, representing a distinct point of view, reflecting different aspects of love and thought. Bernstein mixes classical lyricism with jazz-like rhythms and dance energy. The piece comes across as a conversation in music rather than as a story with a plot. You hear ideas and emotions as characters in dialogue.

Leonard Bernstein’s Serenade after Plato’s “Symposium” is like listening to a dinner party with five people, each sharing his view of love.

In this performance from 2023, violin soloist Midori performs with the WDR Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Constantinos Carydis.