Prelude

1999

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Program Notes:

I began this piece while messing around at the piano with singer-songwriter Liz Phair’s early song “Canary.” Phair’s song opens with a chain of piano octaves that mesmerized me and inspired the opening bars. The rest of the piece owes more to Debussy, whose music was my first great love as a pianist.

July 6, 1999

International New Music Consortium

"Sarah Kirkland Snider's Prelude was masterfully composed. Flowing and impressionistic, rolling waves of sound inspired poetic musings…a very well-written, virtuosic piece that never seemed uneccessarily so.”