AMERICAN SONG:
A CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY


1774
First Shaker colonies in America founded

1776
Francis Hopkinson, first American art song composer, signs Declaration of Independence

1807
Thomas Moore publishes first volume IRISH MELODIES

1825
Beginnings of Hudson River School of landscape painting

1826
Stephen Foster born July 4
Mount paints DANCING ON BARN FLOOR

1833
Lenau travels to American Midwest

1836
Emerson publishes NATURE

1845
American Renaissance
Confluence of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne, Alcotts, Fuller in Concord Thoreau goes to live at Walden

1850
Emerson publishes REPRESENTATIVE MEN
Neo Gothic architecture in vogue
Clay proposes compromise on slavery
Hawthorne publishes SCARLET LETTER

1851
Melville publishes MOBY DICK

1852
H.B. Stowe publishes UNCLE TOM'S CABIN

1854
Thoreau publishes WALDEN
Meyerbeer dies
R. Strauss born

1855
Whitman publishes first edition of LEAVES OF GRASS
Paris World fair

1856
Heine dies
Freud born
Flaubert begins MADAME BOVARY

1857
Baudelaire completes LES FLEURS DU MAL
Transatlantic cable begun to be laid


1858
Carlyle publishes FREDERICK THE GREAT

1859
Emmet composes DIXIE
Tennyson publishes IDYLLS OF KING
Patti debuts in NY as Lucia

1860
Lincoln elected 16th President
Burckhardt's CIVILSATION OF THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY
Grandma Moses, folk artist, born
Church paints TWILIGHT IN THE WILDERNESS

1861
Opéra Garnier opens in Paris
Emancipation of Russian serfs
Frederic Remington born

1862
Brady photographs of Civil War

1863
Manet paints DÉJEUNER SUR L'HERBE
Berlioz completes LES TROYENS
Lincoln issues Emancipation Proclamation
Bierstadt paints ROCKY MOUNTAINS

1864
Foster dies

1865
Lincoln assasinated
Whitman publishes DRUM TAPS
General William Booth founds Salvation Army

1868
Grant elected President
L.M. Alcott publishes LITTLE WOMEN
Rossini dies

1869
Suez Canal opens
Architect Lloyd Wright born
Kensett paints LAKE GEORGE

1870
Moody & Sankey begin to conduct Revivalist meetings

1871
Verdi premieres AIDA
Darwin publishes DESCENT OF MAN

1872
Turgenev's A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
Brooklyn Bridge opened

1874
Charles Ives born in Danbury
Gertrude Stein born
First Impressionist Exhibit in Paris

1875
Twain publishes TOM SAWYER
Eakins paints The Gross Clinic

1876
Wagner's Bayreuth Festival opens
A. Gilchrist visits Whitman in Philadelphia

1877
D.C. French sculpts Emeron portrait
Victoria named Empress of India
H. James publishes THE AMERICAN
Edison invents the phonograph
Chadwick goes to Germany to study
Ibsen's play A DOLL'S HOUSE

1880
Rodin sculpts THE THINKER

1881
Offenbach premieres TALES OF HOFFMANN

1882
Emerson dies in Concord

1883
Metropolitan Opera opens
Cody's Wild West Show

1884
Mahler's SONGS OF A WAYFARER

1885
Cezanne paints MT. ST. VICTOIRE
W. Homer paints FOG WARNING

1886
Liszt dies in Bayreuth
E. Dickinson dies in Amherst

1887
St. Gaudens sculpts LINCOLN
Victoria celebrates 50th Jubilee

1888
MacDowell returns to America
Dickinson posthumously published
Wolf publishes Mörike & Goethe collections

1891
Gaughin departs for Tahiti

1892
Whitman dies in Camden

1893
Ossawa Tanner paints THE BANJO LESSON
Verdi's last opera FALSTAFF
Ford builds first automobile

1894
Beardsley illustrates Wilde's SALOME
Shaw publishes ARMS & THE MAN

1895
Art Nouveau fashionable
Hindemith born

1896
Chekhov completes THE SEA GULL
DIE JUGEND & SIMPLICISSIMUS, German Jugendstil art magazines. founded
E. Curtis begins photo surveys of Native American life
MacDowell composes INDIAN SUITE
1st modern Olympics in Athens

1897
Brahms dies

1898
Curies discover radium
Singer Paul Robeson born
Elisabeth of Autria assasinated

1900
Freud writes INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS
Mrs. Beach sets R. Browning poems

1901
Farwell founds Wa-Wan Press
Queen Victoria dies
Picasso's Blue Period

1902
Debussy premieres PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE
Caruso makes 1st phonograph record

1903
DuBois publishes THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK

1904
Vachel Lindsay tramps country preaching his illuminated poems

1905
Einstein's theory of relativity

1906
San Francisco's great earthquake

1907
Griffes returns to America from Germany
1st Cubist exhibition in Paris

1909
Cadman publishes INDIAN SONGS
R.U. Johnson founds Keats House in Rome

1910
Vaughan Williams composes SEA SYMPHONY

1911
Wa-Wan press is sold & closes
Wharton publishes ETHAN FROME

1912
Jung writes THEORY OF PSYCHOANALYSIS
Titanic sinks

1913
Carpenter composes GITANJALI
Tagore wins Nobel Prize
NY Armory show introduces Cubists

1914
Archduke Ferdinand and wife assasinated
World War I begins

1915
Griffiths epic film, BIRTH OF A NATION
Flowering of New Orleans Jazz

1917
Bolshevik Revolution
Burleigh publishes arrangements of Spirituals

1918
World War I ends
U.S. Post Office burns Joyce's ULYSSES
E.S. Coolidge creates 1st Tanglewood Festival
Duke sets three E.A. Robinson poems

1919
Bauhaus School of architecture
Horatio Parker dies

1920
League of Nations meets in Paris
Expressionist landmark film THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI

1921
Ives publishes 114 SONGS

1923
Le Corbusier writes TOWARD A NEW ARCHITECTURE

1924
Thomas Mann publishes THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

1925
Hitler publishes MEIN KAMPF
Jazz arrives in Europe
Flowering of Harlem Renaissance
Scopes Trial recalls Great Awakening & American Revivalist Movements

1926
Langston Hughes publishes 1st jazz poems, WEARY BLUES
Kern's SHOWBOAT opens
Hopper paints SUNDAY MORNING
S. Homer sets V. Lindsay's GENERAL WILLIAM BOOTH

1928
Gershwin composes AN AMERICAN IN PARIS
Earhart flies across Atlantic

1929
Stock market crashes
Diaghilev dies

1930
Hart Benton paints City Scenes
G. Wood paints AMERICAN GOTHIC

1931
Grant Still's AFRO-AMERICAN SYMPHONY premieres

1933
Hitler appointed German Chancellor

1934
Fitzgerald publishes TENDER IS THE NIGHT
V. Thomson premieres FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS

1935
Gershwin premieres PORGY & BESS

1936
Mussolini & Hitler form Axis
Nazi exhibit of Degenerate Art
A.E. Housman dies

1937
All-India Congress party wins elections
Picasso paints Guernica

1938
W. Evans publishes AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHS
Lloyd Wright builds Taliesen in Phoenix
Orson Wells broadcasts WAR OF THE WORLDS

1939
Joyce publishes FINNEGAN'S WAKE

1940
Copland composes BILLY THE KID
World War II begins

1941
James Agee & Walker Evans publish LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN

1942
Camus publishes L'ETRANGER

1943
Rockwell paints THE FOUR FREEDOMS
Rodgers & Hammerstein's OKLAHOMA opens on Broadway

1944
T. Williams premieres A GLASS MENAGERIE

1945
World War II ends

1946
Dr. Spock publishes baby care book

1948
Gandhi assasinated

1949
Mao Tse Tung creates People's Republic of China
Bernstein composes THE AGE OF ANXIETY
Bowles expatriates to Morocco

1950
McCarthy begins communist hunts

1952
Eisenhower elected President

1953
Elizabeth II crowned Queen of England
A. Miller writes drama,THE CRUCIBLE

1954
V. Thomson resigns as NY HERALD TRIBUNE music critic

1955
Erich Fromm publishes THE SANE SOCIETY

1956
Elvis Presley makes Rock n' roll popular

1957
U..S.S.R. launches SPUTNIK 1 & 2
Bernstein composes West Side Story
Kerouac publishes ON THE ROAD
Agee publishes A DEATH IN THE FAMILY

1958
U.S. Marshalls desegregate schools in Little Rock, AK

1959
Castro becomes Premier of Cuba
Hawaii becomes 50th state

1960
Henze composes PRINZ VON HOMBURG

1961
J.F. Kennedy innaugurated

1962
Britten composes WAR REQUIEM
Barber's Piano Concerto wins Pulitzer

1963
Warhol's Pop Art in vogue
J. K. Kennedy assasinated
Roethke dies

1964
M.L. King awarded Nobel Peace Prize

1967
6-day Arab-Israeil War
50,000 march on Washington to protest Vietnam War
M.L. King leads Civil Rights

1969
Woodstock Music Festival
1st Concorde flight

1971
Stravinsky dies

1972
Bernstein premieres MASS

1973
Ceasefire in Vietnam
Watergate break-in
Britten premieres DEATH IN VENICE

1974
Nixon resigns

1975
New World Records begins series of American music
Ives Centennial celebrated
Argento composes DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF
Rorem composes WOMEN'S VOICES

1979
Bolcom publishes CABARET SONGS

1981
Sylvia Plath's COLLECTED POEMS published posthumously

1983
Galway Kinnell wins Pulitzer Prize for poetry

1985
Elliot Carter wins National Medal for Arts for his compositions

1986
Musée d' Orsay opens in Paris

1987
John Adam's opera, Nixon in China, premieres in Houston
Gorbachov campaigns for "Glasnost"

1989
Rorem sets 2 Whitman poems
J. Adams composes THE WOUND DRESSER (Whitman)

1990
Bernstein & Copland die
Obscenity controversy over Mapplethorpe exhibit in Cincinnati
South African President De Klerk frees Nelson Mandela

1992
R.I. Gordon composes GENIUS CHILD on Langston Hughes texts

1992
Whitman Centennial celebrated