Music
Switzerland is not commonly considered a leading musical nation. However, in the 20th century it produced a number of composers, such as Arthur Honegger, Othmar Schoeck and Frank Martin, all of whom have gained international renown. In Lucerne, the annual Lucerne Festival of international music takes place. Other places have similar festivals, ranging from country and western to pop and jazz. The Montreux Jazz Festival is particularly well known. Nowadays, one could include Eluveitie a Swiss folk metal band who is slowly reaching the mainstream culture, effectively being the first folk metal band to do so. They notably reached #4 on the Swiss Hit Parade for their 2012 album Helvetios.
Swiss composer and musician Andreas Vollenweider gained world wide recognition with his harp music and has received a Grammy Award, followed by two Grammy nominations, one as recent as 2007. His 17 instrumental albums have sold over 15 million copies.
Read more about this topic: Culture Of Switzerland
Famous quotes containing the word music:
“As for the terms good and bad, they indicate no positive quality in things regarded in themselves, but are merely modes of thinking, or notions which we form from the comparison of things with one another. Thus one and the same thing can be at the same time good, bad, and indifferent. For instance music is good for him that is melancholy, bad for him who mourns; for him who is deaf, it is neither good nor bad.”
—Baruch (Benedict)
“Hell is full of musical amateurs: music is the brandy of the damned.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“All good music resembles something. Good music stirs by its mysterious resemblance to the objects and feelings which motivated it.”
—Jean Cocteau (1889–1963)