What is "preludes"

vb. (en-third-person singular of: prelude)

Claude Debussy's Préludes are 24 pieces for solo piano, divided into two books of 12 preludes each. Unlike previous collections of preludes, such as those of J.S. Bach and Chopin's Op. 28, Debussy's does not follow a strict pattern of key signatures.

Each book was written in a matter of months, at an unusually fast pace for Debussy. Book I was written between December 1909 and February 1910, and Book II between the last months of 1912 and early April 1913.

Frédéric Chopin wrote a number of preludes for piano solo. His cycle of 24 preludes, Op. 28, covers all major and minor keys. In addition, Chopin wrote three other preludes: a prelude Op. 45, a piece in A major from 1834, and an unfinished piece in E-flat minor. These are sometimes referred to as Nos. 25, 26, and 27 respectively.

"Preludes" is a poem by T. S. Eliot, composed between 1910 and 1911. It is in turns literal and impressionistic, exploring the sordid and solitary existences of the spiritually moiled as they play out against the backdrop of the drab modern city. In essence, it is four poems rather than one, and it is duly labelled as such. Composed over the course of four years in France and the United States, it comes to just 54 lines. Its four parts are uneven, irregular and written in free verse symptomatic of the speaker's stream of consciousness. Part I is thirteen lines, part II ten, part III fifteen and part IV sixteen.

The somewhat abstracted and fragmented description of "Preludes" appears frequently in Eliot's poetry, and although it can be hard to discern the purpose of each individual image, they add up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

The images in the first stanza of "Preludes" set the context for the rest of the poem: "grimy scraps / Of withered leaves" (6-7), "newspapers from vacant lots" (8), "broken blinds and chimney-pots" (10) are the dingy, littered, concrete objects of the city.

In the second stanza, "The morning comes to consciousness / Of faint stale smells of beer" (14-15), hungover, and the narrator "thinks of all the hands / That are raising dingy shades / In a thousand furnished rooms" (21-23). These last three lines underscore a sense of anonymity (and insignificance) in numbers, dirty vulgarity, and impermanence.

The third stanza introduces the first actual character of the poem in the second person, implicating the reader in the grimy, low urbanity. The soul of this "you" is constituted of a "thousand sordid images" (27) and the soles of "your" feet are yellowed and "your" hands are soiled (37-38), either by physical labor, the dirt and grime of the city, or both. The use of the second person here closes the distance between the poem and the reader, but the degrading, accusatory manner in which it does so perhaps alienates the reader as well. The only redemption in the scene described is found in sunlight and birdsong, which are both jarringly undercut: "light crept up between the shutters, / And you heard the sparrows in the gutters" (31-32). The light is not liberating and illuminating, it creeps and is obstructed. The birdsong comes not from a traditional songbird, but from sparrows—the mice of the bird world—in the gutters of the street.

The poem has been read as a condemnation of modernity, and specifically of urban life. "People are but the equivalent to the ugliness within the scope of their vision" (Smith 6).

Dmitry Kabalevsky's Preludes, Op. 38 are a set of 24 piano pieces in the Chopinian model, each based on a folksong and each in a different key. It was composed in 1943–44, and dedicated to Nikolai Myaskovsky, his teacher. It is one of a number of examples of music written in all 24 major and minor keys.

The score is headed by a quote from Mikhail Lermontov on Russian folksong.

Sergei Rachmaninoff wrote a number of preludes, all for solo piano.

His most important works in this genre are the 24 preludes that cover all 24 major and minor keys. These were, however, written and published at different times, not as a unified set. Of all the composers who wrote sets of 24 pieces in all the keys, Rachmaninoff seems to be the only one who did not originally set out with such a goal in mind.

He also wrote three other individual preludes.

Preludes is a series of novels comprising two trilogies set in the Dragonlance world of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game.

Preludes is a musical fantasia set in the mind of Sergei Rachmaninoff, written and composed by Dave Malloy. The music is a combination of compositions by Rachmaninoff, Malloy, hybrids of the two, as well as music and lyrics from other related compositions.

Préludes pour piano (Preludes for piano) is an early work for piano by the French composer Olivier Messiaen composed in 1928–1929, when the composer was 20 years old. Messiaen considered it to be his first work of any value. The composition is based on Messiaen's modes of limited transposition, and betrays an influence of Debussy's preludes.

The pieces were premiered by the composer in a private performance at the Concerts Durand which took place on January 28, 1930. The first public performance was given by Henriette Roget on March 1, 1930, at the Salle Érard at the Société Nationale in Paris.