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:
“I’ve come close to matching the feeling of that night in 1944 in music, when I first heard Diz and Bird, but I’ve never got there.... I’m always looking for it, listening and feeling for it, though, trying to always feel it in and through the music I play every day.”
—Miles Davis (1926–1991)
“I’d rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you’ll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.... Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”
—Harper Lee (b. 1926)
“Nothing is capable of being well set to music that is not nonsense.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)