Song of America | Timeline

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Song in America

Politics & Culture

Politics

Culture

Post-War America (1946 - 1959)

1946

Paul Bowles sets four poems by Tennessee Williams as Blue Mountain Ballads: "Heavenly Grass," "Lonesome Man," "Cabin," and "Sugar in the Cane"
Elizabeth Bishop's North and South wins the Pulitzer Prize
Paul Hindemith sets Walt Whitman's text in his requiem When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Charles Wakefield Cadman dies
Countee Cullen dies
Carrie Jacobs-Bond dies
Gertrude Stein dies

1946

Dr. Benjamin Spock publishes The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care
The Darmstadt Contemporary Festivals begin
Robert Penn Warren: All the King's Men
Manuel de Falla dies
H. G. Wells dies

1947

Elinor Remick Warren sets verses from Walt Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" as "We Two"
The musical Street Scene debuts, with music by Kurt Weill and text by Langston Hughes
John Adams (composer) born
Jane Kenyon born
Joseph Turrin born
Gwyneth Walker born
Willa Cather dies
Samuel Hoffenstein dies

1947

Partition of India and Pakistan
Menotti's The Medium opens on Broadway
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Jackie Robinson is the first African American to play major-league baseball
Dead Sea Scrolls discovered
Anne Frank's diary is published
Benjamin Britten: Albert Herring
Arnold Schoenberg: A Survivor From Warsaw, Op. 46
W. H. Auden: The Age of Anxiety
Thomas Mann: Dr. Faustus
Arthur Miller: All My Sons
Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar Named Desire
Laurie Anderson born

1948

John Duke sets Four Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson: "Richard Cory," "Miniver Cheevy," "Luke Havergal," and "Calvary"
Samuel Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 premieres with Eleanor Steber and the Boston Symphony Orchestra
Leslie Marmon Silko born
Oley Speaks dies

1948

Alger Hiss indicted
Israel declares independence
Gandhi assassinated
LP records
Aaron Copland writes his Clarinet Concerto for Benny Goodman
The Ed Sullivan Show takes possession of Sunday nights
Reel-to-reel tape introduced
Olivier Messiaen: Turangalila Symphony
Alan Paton: Cry, the Beloved Country
Kathleen Battle born

1949

Paul Bowles expatriates to Morocco
Arthur Farwell: Ten Emily Dickinson Songs, Op. 112, which includes "Wild Nights — Wild Nights!"
William Grant Still: Songs of Separation
Riots in Peekskill, NY at Paul Robeson concerts
Christopher Berg born
Daniel Steven Crafts born
Stephen Paulus born
Henry Burleigh dies

1949

Mao Tse-tung proclaims People's Republic of China
New York City Opera produces William Grant Still's Troubled Island (with lyrics by Langston Hughes and Verna Arvey), the first opera composed by an African American to be performed by a major opera company
Leonard Bernstein composes The Age of Anxiety
Marc Blitzstein's Regina on Broadway
Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson: Lost in the Stars
George Orwell: 1984
Maurice Maeterlinck dies
Richard Strauss dies

1950

Aaron Copland's first set of Old American Songs includes settings of "The Boatmen's Dance," "The Dodger," "Long Time Ago," "Simple Gifts," and "I Bought Me A Cat"
Elinor Remick Warren: "God Be In My Heart"
Beth Anderson born
Marie Howe born
Libby Larsen born
Philip Littell born
Walter Damrosch dies
Edna St. Vincent Millay dies
Kurt Weill dies

1950

McCarthy begins anti-communist investigations
Korean War begins (to 1953)
Apartheid riots begin in South Africa
Gian Carlo Menotti: The Consul
Al Jolson dies
Vaslav Nijinsky dies
George Bernard Shaw dies

1951

Milton Babbitt: Du (song cycle with text by German Expressionist August Stramm)
Jean Berger sets Four Songs after Hughes by Langston Hughes: "In Time of Silver Rain," "Heart," "Carolina Cabin," and "Lonely People"
Aaron Copland: Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson
Vincent Persichetti: Harmonium, Op. 50 (song cycle setting the poetry of Wallace Stevens)
Carlo Caciopo born
Paul Salerni born
Howard Brockway dies
John Alden Carpenter dies

1951

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg convicted of espionage and sentenced to death
UNIVAC computer
Schoenberg dies
Virgil Thomson resigns as music critic of the New York Herald Tribune
Gene Kelly receives special Oscar for Singin' in the Rain
Sinclair Lewis dies
Arnold Schoenberg dies

1952

Ernst Bacon: Quiet Airs (song cycle)
Aaron Copland's second set of Old American Songs includes settings of "The Little Horses," "Zion's Walls," "The Golden Willow Tree," "At the River," and "Ching-A-Ring Chaw"
Miriam Gideon: Epitaphs for Robert Burns and Sonnets from "Fatal Interview" (both song cycles, the latter setting the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay)
Rita Dove born. Dove will become the first African American woman to serve as Poet Laureate to the United States.
Alice Fulton born
Susan Stewart born
Arthur Farwell dies
Julie Mathilde Lippman dies
George Santayana dies

1952

Elizabeth II crowned Queen of England
Puerto Rico becomes a United States Commonwealth
John Cage: 4'33"
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Spiel
Samuel Beckett: Waiting for Godot
Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man
Ernest Hemingway: The Old Man and the Sea
John Steinbeck: East of Eden
E. B. White: Charlotte's Web
Kaija Saariaho born
Paul Éluard dies

1953

Samuel Barber: Hermit Songs
William Grant Still sets “Grief” with poetry by LeRoy V. Brant
Virgil Thomson: Five Songs from William Blake
Theodore Roethke: The Waking
Daniel Asia born
Mark Doty born
Julia de Burgos dies
Ruth Crawford Seeger dies
Sidney Homer dies
Eugene O'Neill dies
Florence Price dies

1953

Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg executed
Joseph Stalin and Sergei Prokofiev die on the same day
Aaron Copland summoned before McCarthy's subcommittee
Leonard Bernstein is the first American to conduct at La Scala (Milan)
Merce Cunningham Dance Co. is founded
Arthur Miller: The Crucible
John Zorn born
Dylan Thomas dies

1954

Margaret Bonds: The Ballad of the Brown King (cantata with text by Langston Hughes)
Robert Beaser born
Michael Daugherty born
David Mason born
Charles Ives dies
John Rosamond Johnson dies

1954

Brown v. Board of Education overturns "separate but equal" doctrine
First polio vaccine
Maria Callas makes her American debut in Chicago
Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Aaron Copland: The Tender Land
Carlisle Floyd: Susannah
Gian Carlo Menotti: The Saint of Bleecker Street
Iannis Xenakis: Metastasis
Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim
William Golding: Lord of the Flies
J. R. R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings
Henri Matisse dies

1955

Dominick Argento sets poems by e. e. cummings in Songs About Spring
Samuel Barber sets Three Songs including "Now Have I Fed and Eaten Up the Rose" by James Joyce after Gottfried Keller, "Bessie Bobtail" by James Stephens, and "I Hear an Army" by James Joyce
David Conte born
James Agee dies
Marion Bauer dies
Wallace Stevens dies

1955

Marian Anderson is the first African American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera
Erich Fromm publishes The Sane Society
Pierre Boulez: Le Marteau Sans Maître
Thomas Hampson born
Simon Rattle born
Thomas Mann dies

1956

Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady opens on Broadway
Leonard Bernstein: Candide
Douglas Moore: The Ballad of Baby Doe
Elvis Presley's first album goes gold
First commercial use of videotape
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gesang der Jüngling

1957

Hermann Reutter: My Dark Hands
Ned Rorem sets several Walt Whitman poems, including "As Adam, Early in the Morning," "Sometimes With One I Love," and "Look Down, Fair Moon"
Steven Mark Kohn born
Richard Pearson Thomas born

1957

U.S.S.R. launches Sputnik 1 and 2
In Little Rock, Arkansas the National Guard prevents black students from entering Central High School; Eisenhower sends Federal troops to ensure desegregation
Samuel Barber: Vanessa
West Side Story created by Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins
Meredith Wilson: The Music Man
James Agee's A Death In The Family is published posthumously and wins the Pulitzer Prize
Jack Kerouac: On The Road
Wham-O introduces the Frisbee
Francis Poulenc: The Dialogues of the Carmelites
Samuel Beckett: Endgame
Jean Sibelius dies
Arturo Toscanini dies

1958

Dominick Argento: Six Elizabethan Songs
William Schuman sets the text of Walt Whitman in his choral work Carols of Death
Robin Behn born
Juliana Hall born
David Leisner born
Gene Scheer born
Alfred Noyes dies

1958

First U.S. satellite
Leonard Bernstein becomes music director of New York Philharmonic and launches Young People's Concerts
Menotti and Schippers found Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy
Elvis Presley drafted
Kennedy Center established when President Eisenhower signs the National Cultural Center Act
Olivier Messiaen: Catalogue d'Oiseaux
Francis Poulenc: La Voix Humaine
Truman Capote: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Deborah Voigt born
Ralph Vaughn Williams dies

1959

Ned Rorem: "Snake" to a poem by Theodore Roethke
Virgil Thomson: Mostly About Love (song cycle)
James Aikman born
Maxwell Anderson dies

1959

Alaska becomes 49th state
Hawaii becomes 50th state
Fidel Castro overthrows Cuban regime and assumes power
Ground-breaking for Lincoln Center
Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum opens
Rogers and Hammerstein: The Sound of Music
Styne and Sondheim: Gypsy
Randall Thompson: Frostiana
Dmitri Shostakovich: Cello Concerto, No. 1
Karlheinz Stockhausen: Zyklus
Lorraine Hansberry: A Raisin in the Sun
Günther Grass: The Tin Drum
Heitor Villa-Lobos dies
Frank Lloyd Wright dies

Post-War America (1946 - 1959)

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