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Preludes
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Sergey Rachmaninoff in profile, seated at a piano, playing with both hands on the keys.
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Sergey Rachmaninoff
Sergey Rachmaninoff

Preludes

works by Rachmaninoff
Written by
Betsy Schwarm
Betsy Schwarm is a music historian based in Colorado. She serves on the music faculty of Metropolitan State University of Denver and gives pre-performance talks for Opera Colorado and the Colorado Symphony...
Betsy Schwarm
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Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree....
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History

Preludes, a group of 24 preludes for piano by Russian composer and pianist Sergey Rachmaninoff. They were intended as virtuoso piano showpieces and were published over the course of nearly 20 years, mostly during the first decade of the 20th century. The most familiar of the preludesā€”and the best-known of all Rachmaninoffā€™s works for solo pianoā€”is the first in the sequence, the Prelude in C-sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2.

By the mid-1800s the preludeā€”once understood to be an introductory piece to a longer workā€”had evolved into a short freestanding piece, one still intended for solo keyboard. Johann Sebastian Bach had established a practice of writing a quantity of pieces each in a different key so as to explore the aural potentials of the different keys. FrĆ©dĆ©ric Chopin had continued it after Bachā€™s death, and thereafter Rachmaninoff took the challenge.

Prelude in G-sharp Minor, Op. 32, No. 12 for piano by Sergey Rachmaninoff; performed by Raul Manjarrez.

Unlike the others, however, Rachmaninoff did not publish his preludes in a single ordered set. He wrote the first prelude in 1892 at age 19 as part of his Opus 3, Morceaux de fantaisie (ā€œFantasy Piecesā€). The other works in that set were of a different character and bore other titles. By 1903 Rachmaninoff had completed another 10 preludes, published as Opus 23, and in 1910 another 13, published as Opus 32. In the years between the composition of the first and last preludes, Rachmaninoff had become an international star as composer, pianist, and conductor. To his dismay, the piece that audiences demanded most often was the earliest of his preludes. He began to refuse to play the piece, having tired of it.

Betsy Schwarm