What is Prelude?
A '''prelude''' is a short piece of music for a [[musical instrument]]. It is called a prelude because it is supposed to be played before something else (Latin ''pre''=before; ''ludere''=to play). ==History== Preludes come from the [[Renaissance music|Renaissance period]], when lutenists (people who played the [[lute]]) [[improvisation|improvised]] (which means playing while making it up as they were going along) a simple piece before a [[concert]] so that they could check whether their [[musical instrument|instrument]] was [[intonation|in tune]]. During the [[16th century]], [[composer|composers]] often wrote pieces which they called a “prelude” which was often a separate piece of music. These were often for lute, [[guitar]] or [[cittern]]. By the early [[18th century]], the [[Baroque music|Baroque]] prelude was often a piece of music which was followed by a [[fugue]]. [[Johann Sebastian Bach]] wrote lots of pieces like this, which were called “Preludes and Fugues”. Most of them were for [[keyboard instrument]]s such as the [[harpsichord]] or [[organ (music)|organ]]. Forty-eight of them are from a collection called ''[[The Well-Tempered Clavier]]'', which was made up of two sets of twenty-four preludes and fugues that are each written in a different [[Major scale|major]] or [[Minor scale|minor]] [[key signature]]. The first prelude, in [[C major]], is very famous. It sounds like an improvisation made up of gentle [[broken chord|broken chords]] like a lutenist might play. (This is the piece that [[Charles Gounod]] later used for his ''[[Ave Maria]]''.) Preludes were also pieces which were followed by a series of [[dance]] movements (a “[[suite (music)|suite]]”). In the [[Classical music period|Classical period]], not many composers wrote preludes. More preludes were composed in the [[19th century]] (the period of [[Romantic music|Romanticism]]). [[Frédéric Chopin]] wrote a collection of twenty-four short [[piano]] pieces which he called “[[Preludes (Chopin)|Preludes]]”. Just like Bach's ''Well-Tempered Clavier