Song of America | Timeline

ERA

Song in America

Politics & Culture

Politics

Culture

Great Depression & World War II (1929 - 1945)

1929

Ruth Crawford: Five Songs on Sandburg Poems
George Crumb born
Noel Da Costa born
John Hollander born
Ursula K. Le Guin born

1929

Herbert Hoover inaugurated
Stock market crashes; beginning of Great Depression
St. Valentine's Day Massacre
Penicillin discovered by Alexander Fleming
William Faulkner: The Sound And The Fury
Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell To Arms
Erich Remarque: All Quiet on the Western Front
Thomas Wolfe: Look Homeward, Angel
Adrienne Rich born
Beverly Sills born
Sergei Diaghilev dies

1930

Ernst Bacon sets Walt Whitman's "One Thought Ever at the Fore" as well as seven other Whitman poems in his song cycle Songs at Parting: A Selection of Walt Whitman's Poems
Elinor Remick Warren: "At Even" (poetry by Thomas S. Jones, Jr.)
Gregory Nunzio Corso born
Gary Snyder born

1930

William Grant Still: Afro-American Symphony
Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton: America Today murals
Grant Wood paints American Gothic
Edward Hopper paints Early Sunday Morning
Igor Stravinsky: Symphony of Psalms
Ray Charles born
Stephen Sondheim born

1931

Samuel Barber sets English poet Matthew Arnold's poem "Dover Beach" for baritone and string quartet
Robert Frost's Collected Poems wins the Pulitzer Prize
David Baker born
Peter La Farge born
Toni Morrison born
George Whitefield Chadwick dies
Vachel Lindsay dies
Edwin Ford Piper dies
Clara Kathleen Rogers dies

1931

Al Capone sentenced to prison for tax evasion
Congress adopts The Star Spangled Banner as the official national anthem
George Gershwin: Of Thee I Sing
Empire State Building

1932

“Brother, Can You Spare a Dime,” words Edgar Y. Harburg and music bu Jay Gorney
John Cage: Three Songs (poetry by Gertrude Stein)
Sylvia Plath born
John Updike born
H. Leslie Adams born
Hart Crane commits suicide
Roland Farley dies
Clinton Scollard dies

1932

Amelia Earhart is first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic
Dmitri Shostakovich: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk
Pearl Buck: The Good Earth
Aldous Huxley: Brave New World

1933

Margaret Bonds is the first black soloist to play with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Charles Ives composes "Walt Whitman," based on a stanza from the poet's "Song of Myself"
Elie Siegmeister's song "The Strange Funeral in Braddock" (text by Mike Gold) is about a steelworker who is killed on the job
Sara Teasdale dies

1933

Franklin Roosevelt inaugurated; New Deal begins
Tennessee Valley Authority created
21st Amendment: Prohibition repealed
Hitler appointed German Chancellor
Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers make their first film together: Flying Down to Rio
Movie: 42nd Street
Claudio Abbado born
Montserrat Caballé born
Jan DeGaetani born
Philip Roth born
Susan Sontag born
Stefan George dies

1934

Ernest Charles: "When I Have Sung My Songs"
Samuel Barber: "Love at the Door" (from a Greek text of Meleager, translated by John Addington Symonds)
John Duke: "Loveliest of Trees" (poem by Alfred Edward Housman)
Sandor Harmati: "The Bluebird of Happiness"
Lillian Evanti, recognized as the first professional African American opera singer, sings at the White House
Wendell Berry born
Marilyn Horne born
Paul Sperry born
Mark Strand born

1934

Federal Communications Commission established
Everglades National Park is formed
Adolf Hitler declares himself "Fürher"
Premiere of Four Saints in Three Acts with music by Virgil Thomson and text by Gertrude Stein
Paul Hindemith: Mathis der Maler
F. Scott Fitzgerald: Tender is the Night
American Academy of Poets founded
Dionne quintuplets born
Peter Maxwell Davies born
James Tenney born
Christian Wolff born
Edward Elgar dies
Gustav Holst dies

1935

Samuel Barber: "Night Wanderers" (text by William Henry Davies)
Henry Burleigh sets Langston Hughes' "Lovely, Dark, and Lonely One"
Peter Blue Cloud born
Gerald Busby born
Mary Oliver born
Charles Martin Loeffler dies
Edwin Arlington Robinson dies

1935

Workers Progress Administration (WPA) is established
Nuremberg Laws
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
WPA establishes Federal Theatre and Federal Music projects
Kurt Weill immigrates to U.S.
Academy of Vocal Arts founded in Philadelphia
Alban Berg: Violin Concerto & Lulu (unfinished)
Gilbert Kalish born
Luciano Pavarotti born
Elvis Presley born
La Monte Young born
Alban Berg dies

1936

Samuel Barber: "Beggar's Song" (text by William Henry Davies)
Arthur Farwell: Four Dickinson Songs, Op. 101, including "Good Morning, Midnight"
A.D. Winans born
Sandor Harmati dies
A. E. Housman dies
Justin Huntley McCarthy dies
Rudyard Kipling dies

1936

Flint Sit-Down Strike
Mussolini and Hitler form Axis
Spanish Civil War begins; American volunteers organize as Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind
Steve Reich born
Federico García Lorca is killed in the Spanish Civil War

1937

Samuel Barber: "In the Dark Pinewood" (text by James Joyce)
Marc Blitzstein: The Cradle Will Rock (musical)
Arthur Farwell: Four Indian Songs, Op. 102 (choral)
David Del Tredici born
Philip Glass born
Arthur Foote dies
George Gershwin dies
Henry Hadley dies
Robert Underwood Johnson dies

1937

Indian National Congress party wins regional elections
Amelia Earhart disappears on a flight across the Pacific
Aaron Copland's book: What to Listen for in Music
Aaron Copland and others found American Composers’ Alliance
Virgil Thomson becomes music critic for the New York Herald- Tribune
Pablo Picasso paints Guernica
John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men
J. R. R. Tolkien: The Hobbit
Nazi exhibit of "Degenerate Art"
Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney appear together for the first time, in Thoroughbreds Don't Cry
Maurice Ravel dies
Edith Wharton dies

1938

Samuel Barber sets Four songs for voice and piano, including James Agee's "Sure on This Shining Night" and "The Secrets of the Old" by William Butler Yeats
John Cage's Five Songs for Contralto (with piano accompaniment) sets the poetry of e. e. cummings
George Houston Bass born
William Bolcom born
John Corigliano born
John Harbison born
Michael S. Harper born
Simon Sargon born
Charles Simic born
Charles Wuorinen born
Alvin Hovey-King dies
James Weldon Johnson dies
Frederick Peterson dies

1938

Kristallnacht
Samuel Barber: Adagio for Strings
Aaron Copland's ballet score Billy the Kid
Walker Evans publishes American Photographs
Frank Lloyd Wright builds Taliesin West in Arizona
Orson Welles's radio broadcast of The War of the Worlds
Thornton Wilder: Our Town
Sergei Prokofiev: Alexander Nevsky
Joyce Carol Oates born
Joan Tower born

1939

Samuel Barber: Three Songs, texts by James Joyce
Gian Carlo Menotti: The Old Maid and the Thief (radio opera)
Dick Allen born
Michael Fried born
Ted Kooser born

1939

World War II begins
Founding of BMI: Broadcast Music Incorporated
Marian Anderson performs at Lincoln Memorial
Founding of American Music Center
Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears move to New York for three years, and Britten composes Les Illuminations
James Joyce publishes Finnegans Wake
New York World's Fair takes visitors to "The World of Tomorrow"
John Steinbeck publishes The Grapes of Wrath, which wins the Pulitzer Prize and will become an opera by Ricky Ian Gordon in 2007
Movies: Gone With the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Stagecoach makes John Wayne a star
William Butler Yeats dies

1940

Charles Naginski sets Whitman's "Look Down, Fair Moon"
Joseph Brodsky born
Alva Henderson born
William Heyen born
Robert Pinsky born
Ella Higginson dies
Charles Naginski dies
James H. Rogers dies

1940

Fair Labor Standards Act establishes a minimum wage and the 40-hour work week
Fall of France
Battle of Britain
Leon Trotsky assassinated in Mexico
Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood opens
Igor Stravinsky moves to Hollywood
Ernest Hemingway: For Who the Bell Tolls
Frank Zappa born
Paul Klee dies
F. Scott Fitzgerald dies

1941

Florence Price sets a poem of Langston Hughes in "Songs to the Dark Virgin"
Billy Collins born
Canadian-American composer Leslie Crabtree born
Robert Hass born
James Joyce dies
Rabindranath Tagore dies

1941

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor
U.S. enters World War II
James Agee and Walker Evans publish Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Orson Welles's film Citizen Kane
Olivier Messiaen composes the Quartet for the End of Time while in a prisoner of war camp
Richard Strauss: Capriccio
Bob Dylan born
Virginia Woolf dies

1942

Ernst Bacon: Six Songs includes Emily Dickinson's "The Banks Of The Yellow Sea"
Kurt Weill sets Walt Whitman's "Dirge for Two Veterans" as part of his Three Walt Whitman Songs. In 1947, Weill will write a fourth Whitman setting, "Come Up From the Fields, Father," and the song grouping will become Four Walt Whitman Songs
William Matthews born
Dave Smith born
George M. Cohan dies

1942

Battle of Stalingrad
Leonard Bernstein becomes assistant to Serge Koussevitzky at Tanglewood
Merce Cunningham and John Cage begin collaborating
Be-bop jazz emerges, thanks to Charlie Parker, Dizzie Gillespie, and others
Irvin Berlin's song "White Christmas"
Albert Camus: The Stranger
C. S. Lewis: The Screwtape Letters
First issue of Yank newspaper
Edward Hopper: Nighthawks
Daniel Barenboim born
Alexander Zemlinsky dies

1943

Leonard Bernstein: I Hate Music!: A Cycle of Five Kid Songs
Erich Korngold sets Margaret Kennedy's "Tomorrow"
Tess Gallagher born
Louise Glück born
Baritone William Parker born
Conductor James Levine born
Joseph Schwantner born
James Tate born

1943

Leonard Bernstein makes his conducting debut with the New York Philharmonic
Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! opens on Broadway
Norman Rockwell paints his Four Freedoms series
Betty Smith: A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Meredith Monk born

1944

Arthur Farwell's Twelve Emily Dickinson Songs, Op. 107 includes "Tie the Strings to My Life"
Paul Hindemith sets "Sing on there in the swamp," verses from Walt Whitman's Memories of President Lincoln
Michael Tilson Thomas born
Amy Marcy Cheney Beach dies
Edgar Stillman Kelley dies

1944

Normandy invasion and liberation of Paris
First liberation of a death camp
Leonard Bernstein's ballet Fancy Free and musical On the Town
Aaron Copland's score for Martha Graham's ballet Appalachian Spring includes the Shaker melody "Simple Gifts"
Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie
Olivier Messiaen: Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus
Kiri Te Kanawa born
Lucy Shelton born
Vasili Kandinsky dies
Edvard Munch dies

1945

Franklin D. Roosevelt dies; Harry S. Truman becomes president
World War II ends in Europe
Atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki; World War II ends
United Nations founded
Rogers and Hammerstein: Carousel
Benjamin Britten: Peter Grimes
George Orwell: Animal Farm
Evelyn Waugh: Brideshead Revisited
Phyllis Bryn-Julson born
Jessye Norman
Frederica von Stade born
Itzhak Perlman born
Béla Bartók dies
Pietro Mascagni dies
Anton Webern dies

Great Depression & World War II (1929 - 1945)

ERA

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