After a 1960 White House performance by Bernstein, President Eisenhower declared, "I like music with a theme, not all those arias and barcarolles." Snagging his title from Eisenhower's remark, Bernstein concocts a song cycle that veers from dodecaphony to scat singing to klezmer. But the texts, mostly written by Bernstein, assuredly do have a theme: love. The song cycle was premiered in 1988 in a version for four voices and piano duet; within a year, Bernstein had reduced the vocal requirement to one mezzo-soprano and one baritone. In 1989, Bright Sheng expanded the piano part to strings and percussion, and by 1993, Bruce Coughlin had made a full orchestration.

In the Prelude, the vocalists sing "I love you" over a rhythmically jagged, nearly atonal accompaniment. Obviously, love is more complicated than the singers admit, as is discovered in the following "Love Duet," in which the subject is the song itself ("Is it art or minimal music or classical or popular song?"); the restless song symbolizes the singers' relationship.

"Little Smary," for mezzo, sets a bedtime story often told by Bernstein's mother (who is credited as author), in which Little Smary loses and then finds her "wuddit" (rabbit). At the moment of loss, the music becomes distressed and atonal, although there is a flourish of hard-won Straussian triumph at the end. "The Love of My Life," for baritone, is a largely 12-tone piece with moments of tonality and even allusions to the blues; the singer is realizing that great love may be anticlimactic. "Greeting," for mezzo, is an adaptation of a song Bernstein wrote in 1955 upon the birth of his son, Alexander. It's a moment of repose before the baritone launches into "Oif Mayn Khas'neh" (At My Wedding), a Yiddish text by Yankev Yitsshok Segal. This is a slightly surreal Jewish wedding scene; the music, based on a tone row, is a savage dismemberment of klezmer style, with a slow, cantorial cadenza giving way to a frenzied conclusion. Quiet returns in the duet "Mr. and Mrs. Webb Say Goodnight," a bedtime conversation between Charles Webb, dean of the Indiana School of Music, and his wife, Kenda. The music briefly surveys mid-twentieth century pop styles. The pianists (or orchestral musicians) quietly sing scat, representing boys who refuse to go to sleep, while their parents wish they themselves could nod off. Finally, the two soloists merely hum throughout the serene, waltz-like but elegiac "Nachspiel (Postlude) (In memoriam...)."

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