Renato de Grandis's forty-eight Preludi per Pianoforte were composed several years after the composer decided, shortly after his 60th birthday, to stop composing. After living in Germany and Belgium for thirty years, building a reputation as one of the major composers in Europe's avant-garde music scene, de Grandis decided to move back to Italy to go on retreat. His withdrawal from composing lasted only a few years, however; it appears travelling led him back to music. Considered as a whole, one finds in the Preludes the entire spectrum of de Grandis's musical thought.