Divertimento is a musical genre, with most of its examples from the 18th century. The mood of the divertimento is most often lighthearted (as a result of being played at social functions) and it is generally composed for a small ensemble

Musical ensemble

A musical ensemble is a group of people who perform instrumental or vocal music. In classical music, trios or quartets either blend the sounds of musical instrument families or group together instruments from the same instrument family, such as string ensembles or wind ensembles...

.

Divertimento is used to describe a wide variety of secular instrumental works for soloist or chamber ensemble. It is a kind of music entertainment although it could also be applied to serious genres. After 1780, the term generally designated works that were informal or light.

As a separate genre, it appears to have no specific form, although most of the divertimenti of the second half of the 18th century go either back to a dance suite

Suite

In music, a suite is an ordered set of instrumental or orchestral pieces normally performed in a concert setting rather than as accompaniment; they may be extracts from an opera, ballet , or incidental music to a play or film , or they may be entirely original movements .In the...

 approach (derived from the 'ballet' type of theatrical divertimento), or take the form of other chamber music

Chamber music

Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...

 genres of their century (as a continuation of the merely instrumental theatrical divertimento). There are many other terms which describe music similar to the divertimento, including serenade

Serenade

In music, a serenade is a musical composition, and/or performance, in someone's honor. Serenades are typically calm, light music.The word Serenade is derived from the Italian word sereno, which means calm....

, cassation

Cassation (Music)

Cassation is a minor form consisting of a suite of 18th century short musical works, usually played outside , and almost always beginning with a march. These suites could have up to seven movements.Haydn, Mozart and Dittersdorf all wrote in this form....

, notturno, Nachtmusik; after about 1780, the divertimento was the term most commonly applied to this light, "after-dinner" and often outdoor music. Divertimenti have from one to nine movements, and there is at least one example with thirteen. The earliest publication to use the name "divertimento" is by Carlo Grossi

Carlo Grossi

Carlo Grossi was an Italian composer.-Life:He is believed to have been the first composer to use the term "divertimento", in his 1681 composition "Il divertimento de' grandi musiche da camera, ò per servizio di tavola". He was the organist at the church of SS...

, in 1681, in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

 (Il divertimento de' grandi: musiche da camera, ò per servizio di tavola) --and the hint that the divertimento is to accompany "table service" applies to later ages as well, since this light music was often used to accompany banquets and other social events.

Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...

 is known for having composed different types of divertimenti, sometimes even taking the form of a small symphony

Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...

 (or, more exactly: sinfonia

Sinfonia

Sinfonia is the Italian word for symphony. In English it most commonly refers to a 17th- or 18th-century orchestral piece used as an introduction, interlude, or postlude to an opera, oratorio, cantata, or suite...

), for example, the Salzburg Symphonies KV 136-137-138. Even more unusual is his six movement string trio, KV 563, which is a serious work belonging with his string quartets and quintets, for all that it is labeled a divertimento. Other composers of divertimenti include Leopold Mozart

Leopold Mozart

Johann Georg Leopold Mozart was a German composer, conductor, teacher, and violinist. Mozart is best known today as the father and teacher of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and for his violin textbook Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule.-Childhood and student years:He was born in Augsburg, son of...

, Carl Stamitz

Carl Stamitz

Karl Philipp Stamitz , who later changed his given name to Carl, was a German composer of partial Czech ancestry , and a violin, viola and viola d'amore virtuoso...

, Haydn

Joseph Haydn

Franz Joseph Haydn , known as Joseph Haydn , was an Austrian composer, one of the most prolific and prominent composers of the Classical period. He is often called the "Father of the Symphony" and "Father of the String Quartet" because of his important contributions to these forms...

 and Boccherini

Luigi Boccherini

Luigi Rodolfo Boccherini was an Italian classical era composer and cellist whose music retained a courtly and galante style while he matured somewhat apart from the major European musical centers. Boccherini is most widely known for one particular minuet from his String Quintet in E, Op. 11, No...

.

Several examples exist from the 20th century, including works by Nikolai Medtner

Nikolai Medtner

Nikolai Karlovich Medtner was a Russian composer and pianist.A younger contemporary of Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexander Scriabin, he wrote a substantial number of compositions, all of which include the piano...

, Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni

Ferruccio Busoni was an Italian composer, pianist, editor, writer, piano and composition teacher, and conductor.-Biography:...

, Vincent Persichetti

Vincent Persichetti

Vincent Ludwig Persichetti was an American composer, teacher, and pianist. An important musical educator and writer, Persichetti was a native of Philadelphia...

, Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

, Béla Bartók

Béla Bartók

Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...

, Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten

Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten, OM CH was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He showed talent from an early age, and first came to public attention with the a cappella choral work A Boy Was Born in 1934. With the premiere of his opera Peter Grimes in 1945, he leapt to...

, Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, Gordon Jacob

Gordon Jacob

Gordon Percival Septimus Jacob was an English composer. He is known for his wind instrument composition and his instructional writings.-Life:...

, Lennox Berkeley

Lennox Berkeley

Sir Lennox Randal Francis Berkeley was an English composer.- Biography :He was born in Oxford, England, and educated at the Dragon School, Gresham's School and Merton College, Oxford...

, Gareth Walters

Gareth Walters

Gareth Walters is a well-established contemporary composer who was born in Swansea, Wales, and completed his early education there. As a schoolboy, he began to compose, and he received early encouragement from the famous English composer, conductor and pianist, Benjamin Britten, who was a frequent...

, Malcolm Arnold

Malcolm Arnold

Sir Malcolm Henry Arnold, CBE was an English composer and symphonist.Malcolm Arnold began his career playing trumpet professionally, but by age thirty his life was devoted to composition. He was ranked with Benjamin Britten as one of the most sought-after composers in Britain...

, Lars-Erik Larsson

Lars-Erik Larsson

Lars-Erik Larsson was a notable Swedish composer of the 20th century.-Biography:Lars-Erik Vilner Larsson was born in Åkarp in 1908...

 and Bohuslav Martinů

Bohuslav Martinu

Bohuslav Martinů was a prolific Czech composer of modern classical music. He was of Czech and Rumanian ancestry. Martinů wrote six symphonies, 15 operas, 14 ballet scores and a large body of orchestral, chamber, vocal and instrumental works. Martinů became a violinist in the Czech Philharmonic...

. Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....

 also arranged a divertimento from his ballet to music of Tchaikovsky, Le baiser de la fée

Le baiser de la fée

Le baiser de la fée can refer to:* Le baiser de la fée , Igor Stravinsky's 1928 ballet, revised 1950* Le baiser de la fée , Sir Frederick Ashton's 1935 ballet...

, while Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo

Joaquín Rodrigo Vidre, 1st Marquis of the Gardens of Aranjuez , commonly known as Joaquín Rodrigo, was a composer of classical music and a virtuoso pianist. Despite being nearly blind from an early age, he achieved great success...

 called his 1982 cello concerto a "Concierto como un divertimento

Concierto como un divertimento

Joaquín Rodrigo's Concierto como un divertimento, for cello and orchestra received its first performance at the Royal Festival Hall, London, on April 15, 1982. The performers were the British cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, who had commissioned the concerto, and the London Philharmonic Orchestra...

" ("Concerto like a divertimento").