- Gershwin wrote his Three Preludes for Piano in 1926 and premiered the set at the Hotel Roosevelt in NYC that same year in a joint recital with opera singer Marguerite d’Alvarez.
- Gershwin dedicated the “jazz” preludes to his friend and collaborator, William Merrigan Daly.1
- There has been much confusion around the genesis of Three Preludes for Piano. It seems that Gershwin originally intended to write 24 preludes and deviated from that plan at some point. At the Hotel Roosevelt recital where the preludes premiered (mentioned above), the program noted five preludes rather than three. What most likely happened was that Gershwin felt the performance of his three preludes was too short, so he arranged musical material from previous compositions into two more pieces to fill out the program.2
- Listen for – the blues motif that is introduced at the start of the first prelude and repeats throughout.
- Gershwin once noted that the second prelude is “a sort of blues lullaby.”3
Sources
- “3 Preludes (Gershwin, George),” IMSLP, accessed August 20, 2025, https://imslp.org/wiki/3_Preludes_(Gershwin,_George).
- Robert Wyatt, “The Seven Jazz Preludes of George Gershwin: A Historical Narrative,” American Music 7, no. 1 (1989): 68–85. https://doi.org/10.2307/3052050
- Jessie Rothwell, “Three Preludes,” Hollywood Bowl, accessed August 20, 2025, https://www.hollywoodbowl.com/musicdb/pieces/4267/three-preludes.
Cut IDs
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