Music
Many important classical composers were born in Belgium. One of the most famous is César Franck but Henri Vieuxtemps, Eugène Ysaÿe, Guillaume Lekeu and Wim Mertens are also noteworthy. Many great Medieval and Renaissance composers, such as Gilles Binchois, Orlande de Lassus, Guillaume Dufay, Heinrich Isaac and Jacob Obrecht came from the area which is now Belgium (see the Franco-Flemish School).
Well-known singers include pioneer Jacques Brel, Arno, Maurane, Bobbejaan Schoepen, Salvatore Adamo, Philippe Lafontaine and Pierre Rapsat. and Gotye
Adolphe Sax, the inventor of the saxophone, was born in Belgium. The country has also a very active jazz scene that is achieving international recognition with bands like Aka Moon, Maak's Spirit and Octurn. Harmonicist Toots Thielemans, guitarist Philip Catherine and Django Reinhardt are probably the best known Belgian jazz musicians.
Hooverphonic, formed in the mid-1990s, is a Belgian pop / trip hop band that achieved international recognition through their inclusion on the soundtrack Bernardo Bertolucci's 1996 film Io Ballo da Sola (English: Stealing Beauty). Other popular Belgian pop music comes from Axelle Red, Vaya Con Dios, Kate Ryan and K's Choice.
Belgium has also influenced electronic music with a.o. Front 242, Praga Khan (also known as Lords of Acid) and 2 Many DJ's, and rock music with dEUS and Soulwax.
Belgian hip-hop started with the rise of Starflam, CNN (a Brussels-based crew) and 't Hof van Commerce in the mid 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Belgium
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“See where my Love sits in the beds of spices,
Beset all round with camphor, myrrh, and roses,
And interlaced with curious devices
Which her apart from all the world incloses!
There doth she tune her lute for her delight,
And with sweet music makes the ground to move,
Whilst I, poor I, do sit in heavy plight,
Wailing alone my unrespected love;”
—Bartholomew Griffin (d. 1602)
“I cannot say what poetry is; I know that our sufferings and our concentrated joy, our states of plunging far and dark and turning to come back to the world—so that the moment of intense turning seems still and universal—all are here, in a music like the music of our time, like the hero and like the anonymous forgotten; and there is an exchange here in which our lives are met, and created.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“A man in all the world’s new fashion planted,
That hath a mint of phrases in his brain.
One who the music of his own vain tongue
Doth ravish like enchanting harmony.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)