Divertimento
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This article is about the musical term "divertimento". For the comedy duo of the same name, see: Cabaret Divertimento
A divertimento (Italian: pleasure, plural: divertimenti) is a multi-movement instrumental piece. It usually has an entertaining, cheerful or dance-like character and is played in various instrumentations as "table music" or "open-air music". Until the end of the 18th century the divertimento was widespread and popular at European courts. The divertimento occupies a particularly large space in the Viennese Classical period in the works of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (as an example, the Divertimento in F major, K. 138) as well as their contemporaries. Mozart's late Divertimento in E-flat major for string trio, K. 563, reveals the upgrading of the entertaining genre to a piece of sophisticated chamber music.
Completely out of fashion in the 19th century, it was taken up again by individual composers in the 20th century, for example Divertimento for String Orchestra by Béla Bartók, Divertimento for Small Orchestra by Paul Graener or in the symphonic Divertimento for Orchestra by Leonard Bernstein.
Other uses of the term
In his 1994 collection of notes and short stories Zettelkasten, Michael Ende published Divertimento in PP, an absurd story about snippet folder scales that is thoroughly multi-movement, entertaining, and even musical.
