prelude

IPA: prˈeɪɫud

An introductory or preliminary performance or event.
(music) A short, free-form piece of music, originally one serving as an introduction to a longer and more complex piece; later, starting with the Romantic period, generally a stand-alone piece.
(programming) A standard module or library of subroutines and functions to be imported, generally by default, into a program.
(figurative) A forerunner to anything.

Examples of "prelude" in Sentences

The tenuous cloud floats near the volcano's mouth, as if in prelude to an eruption.
She had been gone about an hour, when the sky suddenly darkened, the wind rose and the thunder rolled in prelude to the storm.
It came as South Korea and the United States hold an annual military exercise that North Korea calls a prelude to an invasion.
Since February, the Army has had the power to patrol the streets jointly with the police, a measure that many called a prelude to martial law.
His first record was of the 24 preludes that Chopin published in 1839, and I thought we'd listen to a little bit of the "Raindrop" prelude, which is the most popular one.
The move from women in tutus doing story ballets like Swan Lake to people in sweat pants running around the stage like gymnasts while a Bach prelude is played over the PA system did a great deal to marginalize the popularity of ballet.
This intricate web of departments and agencies, massively staffed, is technically controlled by the president, but often seems to control him, whether through Cabinet brawls of clashing egos or interagency turf wars -- a specialty in the Bush years, particularly during the first-term prelude to Iraq, when ideological differences pitted Donald Rumsfeld and his hawks at Defense against Colin Powell's diplomats at State, with Condoleezza Rice, in her small redoubt at the National Security Council, squeezed out altogether.