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 if, as if, as if the disparate halves
Of things were waiting in a betrothal known
To none, awaiting espousal to the sound
Of right joining, a music of ideas, the burning
And breeding and bearing birth of harmony,
The final relation, the marriage of the rest.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“In benevolent natures the impulse to pity is so sudden, that like instruments of music which obey the touch ... you would think the will was scarce concerned, and that the mind was altogether passive in the sympathy which her own goodness has excited. The truth is,—the soul is [so] ... wholly engrossed by the object of pity, that she does not ... take leisure to examine the principles upon which she acts.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“Thy remembrance, and repentance, and deep musings are not free
From the music of two voices and the light of one sweet smile.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)