Song in America |
Politics & Culture
 |
Politics |
 |
Culture |
End of the Century (1980 - 1999) |
| 1980 | 1980
- Iranian militants seize American hostages in Iran
- Mount St. Helen's erupts
- Philip Glass: Satyagraha
- Oliver Knussen: Where the Wild Things Are
- Karlheinz Stockhausen: Donnerstag (La Scala)
- Italo Calvino: Italian Folktales
- Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose
- Galway Kinnell wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry
- Jean-Paul Sartre dies
|
| 1981 | 1981
- Ronald Reagan inaugurated
- Sandra Day O'Connor becomes first woman on Supreme Court
- Nuclear freeze campaign
- First personal computer
- Pierre Boulez: Repons
|
1982- Dominick Argento: The Andrée Expedition (song cycle for baritone and piano setting the letters of Swedish explorer Salomon August Andrée)
- Milton Babbitt: The Head of the Bed (song cycle setting the poetry of John Hollander)
- Jay Ungar sets Cleo Laine's "A Time for Farewell"
- Yehudi Wyner: On This Most Voluptuous Night (song cycle setting the poetry of William Carlos Williams)
- Archibald MacLeish dies
- Kenneth Rexroth dies
| 1982
- Vietnam Veterans Memorial opens
- Compact discs
- Michael Jackson's Thriller album
- Alice Walker: The Color Purple
- Musicals include Cats, Little Shop of Horrors, and Nine
- Cathy Berberian dies
|
| 1983 | 1983
- Terrorist explosion kills 237 Marines in Lebanon
- First generation mobile phones
- Olivier Messiaen: St. Francis of Assisi
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| 1984 | 1984
- Summer Olympics in Los Angeles
- Ned Rorem: An American Oratorio
- Truman Capote dies
|
| 1985 | 1985
- Gorbachev urges perestroika and glasnost
- Elliot Carter wins National Medal of Arts
- William Schuman: On Freedom's Ground: An American Cantata
- E. B. White dies
|
| 1986 | 1986
- Space shuttle Challenger explodes
- Margaret Atwood: The Handmaid's Tale
- Musée d'Orsay opens in Paris
- Georgia O'Keeffe dies
- Peter Pears dies
|
| 1987 | 1987
- John Adams: Nixon in China
- Musicals include Starlight Express, Les Misérables and Into the Woods
- Toni Morrison: Beloved
- DAT tapes introduced
- Andy Warhol dies
|
1988- John Harbison: Simple Daylight (song cycle setting the poetry of Michael Fried)
- Léonie Adams dies
| 1988
- Lukas Foss' With Music Strongsets the poetry of Walt Whitman for chorus with orchestra
- Gabriel García Márquez: Love in the Time of Cholera
- Musicals include Phantom of the Opera
|
| 1989 | 1989
- George H.W. Bush inaugurated
- Berlin Wall comes down
- Tiananmen Square protests
- Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska
- The Iranian government sentences Salman Rushdie to death for his book The Satanic Verses
- Mezzo soprano Jan DeGaetani dies of leukemia
|
| 1990 | 1990
- South African President de Klerk frees Nelson Mandela
- Persian Gulf War (to 1991)
- German reunification
- Obscenity controversy over Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati
- Restoration of the Sistene Chapel paintings completed
- A. S. Byatt: Possession (novel)
- Roald Dahl dies
|
| 1991 | 1991
- U.S.S.R. dissolves
- John Adams: The Death of Klinghoffer (opera)
- John Corigliano: The Ghosts of Versailles premieres at the Metropolitan Opera
- Second generation mobile phones
- Martha Graham dies
|
| 1992 | 1992
- Louise Glück's volume The Wild Iris wins the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry
- Francis Bacon dies
- Olivier Messiaen dies
|
| 1993 | 1993
- Bill Clinton inaugurated
- Marian Anderson dies
- William Parker (baritone) dies of AIDS at the age of 49
|
| 1994 | 1994
- English Channel Tunnel inaugurated
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| 1995 | 1995
- Digital videotape introduced for home use
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| 1996 | 1996 |
| 1997 | 1997 |
| 1998 | 1998 |
| 1999 | 1999 |
