Carl Nielsen wrote his Festive Prelude in 1900 to commemorate the coming of the new age. Majestic and proud in spirit, this brief piano work gives the impression of being the instrumental accompaniment to a national anthem or patriotic song, and is an appropriately ceremonious farewell to the pomp and circumstance of the nineteenth century.

A mere minute and a half long, and in a bright E major key, the Festive Prelude was a success even with Nielsen's lifelong nemesis, the critic Charles Kjerulf, who declared the piece "genuine, with a grandiose style." The work was printed in the Danish newspaper Politiken on January 1, 1901, with the headline, "A Prelude to the New Century." Nielsen dedicated the piece to J. F. Willumsen, a Danish artist and sculptor who had been a close friend of the composer and his wife for many years.

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