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:
“Good music is very close to primitive language.”
—Denis Diderot (1713–1784)
“We often love to think now of the life of men on beaches,—at least in midsummer, when the weather is serene; their sunny lives on the sand, amid the beach-grass and bayberries, their companion a cow, their wealth a jag of driftwood or a few beach plums, and their music the surf and the peep of the beech-bird.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air; thence have I followed it,
Or it hath drawn me rather.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)