PROLOGUE

Released as a single in 1972, Prologue is my personal favourite piece of music by Renaissance - a brilliant composition that was the first track on the album of the same name and often used as the opening number at the band's live concerts. It is not exactly an instrumental as it does feature lots of wordless vocals, but no lyrics. This classical, jazzy instrumental is in my opinion a masterpiece of Symphonic progressive Rock and one that I never tire of even if played on repeat.

The other track on this single is Spare Some Love, also taken from the album Prologue. The single version is an edit that is 3 minutes and 49 seconds compared to the album version which is over 5 minutes. The single version was released on CD for the first time as a bonus track on the 2018 CD re-issue of Prologue by Esoteric Recordings. I am not very fond of this song, so the edit does not offend me.

As I understand it, on some versions of this single it was Spare Some Love that was the a-side whilst other versions (as the one showed here) had Prologue as the a-side. It was brave to release something like Prologue as a single, and though it probably did not do much in the charts it is a classic of the genre and a great piece of music.