Cassation (music)

Cassation is a minor musical genre related to the serenade and divertimento. In the mid- to late 18th century, cassations commonly comprised loosely assembled sets of short movements intended for outdoor performance by orchestral or chamber ensembles. The genre was popular in southern German-speaking lands. Other synonymous titles used by German-speaking composers and cataloguers included Cassatio, Cassatione and Kassation.^[1] An equivalent Italian term was Cassazione. The genre is occasionally alluded to in the titles of some twentieth-century compositions.