The word "prelude" is correct and usable in written English.
It is typically used to describe something that is a preparation or introduction to a larger event or process. For example, "The preliminary rounds were just a prelude to the championship."
Her speech followed the passage through parliament of an Act of Recognition, legislation intended as a prelude to the referendum.
The Creamfields festival on the old Liverpool airport site in Speke, now in its fifth year, had an unfortunate prelude when police began investigating corruption claims and arrested an organiser for allegedly bribing a council official.
She said: "The science is clear - global emissions need to swiftly peak as a prelude to a deep de-carbonisation of the global economy by the second half of the century.
Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi will launch its first stores in North America and Europe on Tuesday, selling low-cost accessories as a prelude to launching smartphones in the west.
Unless we think of it as a prelude to greater changes, all we achieve is shifting patterns of inequality - which we will justify with the pretence that everybody had an equal chance of "getting on".
They've done this twice already and in both cases it's been a prelude to privatisation".
On the face of it Quagliarella is a fine signing for the Partenopei, but the fear will be that this is simply a prelude to them selling the brilliant Ezequiel Iván Lavezzi on to a bigger club.
It is the prelude to the long rains.
There are worse places to be watching cricket in the spring than Worcester where every four years, as a traditional prelude to another Ashes summer, the cathedral stood sombre sentinel as Don flowed as serenely as does the Severn.
Both Walters scored - a prelude to their success three years later - and Fritz captained Germany for the first time.
It could be a more straightforward criminal enterprise, a prelude to identity theft.
