Around 40 minutes in length and scored for diverse instruments including horns, trumpets and timpani, the Serenade in D major by Johannes Brahms comes close to the symphony. Written in 1858/59 by the up-and-coming composer, opus 11 started out as a simpler work with four movements for “small orchestra” before turning into the “Symphony Serenade” that we know today. Our study score not only offers the scholarly musical text from the Brahms Complete Edition but also an extensive preface in which the editor Michael Musgrave presents the complicated genesis of Brahms’s first great orchestral work.