Song of America | Timeline

ERA

Song in America

Politics & Culture

Politics

Culture

The New Millennium (2000 - Present)

2000

Tom Cipullo: Climbing: 7 Songs on 8 Poems by African-Americans (song cycle)
Lori Laitman: Men With Small Heads (song cycle setting the poetry by Thomas Lux)
Libby Larsen: My Ántonia
Simon Sargon: Intimations of Mortality (song cycle)
Gwendolyn Brooks dies
Karl Shapiro dies

2000

U.S. population over 281,000,000, with 25% non-Caucasian

2001

Tom Cipullo: Late Summer (song cycle)
Richard Danielpour sets four poems by Maya Angelou as Portraits
A. R. Ammons dies
Gregory Nunzio Corso dies

2001

George W. Bush inaugurated
Attacks of September 11
War in Afghanistan begins
Apple introduces the iPod

2002

Ned Rorem's musical response to 9/11, the song cycle Aftermath
Robert Beaser: Four Dickinson Songs
William Bolcom: Old Addresses
Richard Pearson Thomas: Race For the Sky (Voices of 9/11), a song cycle setting poems left on New York City streets after 9/11
Noel Da Costa dies
Kenneth Koch dies
Charles Henri Ford dies

2002

2003

George Crumb: The River of Life: American Songbook I & A Journey Beyond Time: American Songbook II
James Dillet Freeman dies
Josephine Jacobsen dies
William Roy dies
Robert Strassburg dies

2003

War in Iraq begins
MySpace is launched

2004

George Crumb: Winds of Destiny: American Songbook IV, which includes a setting of Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore's text "When Johnny Comes Marching Home"
Anthony Hecht dies
Czesław Miłosz dies
Mona Van Duyn dies

2004

2005

Thomas Hampson and Library of Congress initiate Song of America Project
Robert Creeley dies
Richard Eberhart dies
Arnold Weinstein dies

2005

2006

Stephen Paulus: A Heartland Portrait: Five Songs for Baritone and Piano, setting the poetry of Poet Laureate Ted Kooser
Stanley Kunitz dies

2006

Twitter is launched

2007

Ricky Ian Gordon: The Grapes of Wrath (opera)
William Meredith dies

2007

2008

Tom Cipullo: America: 1968 (song cycle setting the poetry of Robert Hayden)
Ned Rorem: Songs Old and New, for soprano & orchestra, with texts by Gertrude Stein, Walt Whitman, Robert Hillyer, Christina Georgina Rossetti, Paul Goodman, and Edgar Allan Poe
Frank Lewin dies

2008

Biggest recession since the 1930s begins

2009

Tom Cipullo: Insomnia
Richard Danielpour sets poems by Maya Angelou as A Woman's Life
Michael Daugherty: Letters from Lincoln (song cycle for baritone and orchestra)
James Primosch: Songs For Adam (song cycle for baritone and orchestra)
George Perle dies
John Updike dies

2009

Barack Obama inaugurated
Sonia Sotomayor becomes first person of Latino heritage on Supreme Court

2010

Libby Larsen's piece Chain of Hope, based on letters and writings regarding Frederick Douglass, is premiered in Rochester, New York
Donald Windham dies

2010

2011

The Song of America radio series is broadcast for the first time on WFMT Chicago
Jake Heggie: A Question of Light (song cycle) and The Breaking Waves (song cycle)
Lee Hoiby dies
Samuel Menashe dies

2011

Earthquake off the coast of Japan and subsequent tsunami kills thousands
Milton Babbitt dies at the age of 94

2012

2012

Adrienne Rich dies

The New Millennium (2000 - Present)

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