Among over 60 major compositions are his breakthrough piece for string septet, "Shaker Loops" (1978); his first significant large-scale orchestral work, "Harmonielehre" (1985); the popular fanfare "Short Ride in a Fast Machine" (1986); and "On the Transmigration of Souls" (2002), a piece for orchestra and chorus commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks, which won the Pulitzer Prize for Music in 2003. He has written several operas, notably "Nixon in China" (1987), which recounts Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China; the controversial "The Death of Klinghoffer" (1991), based on the hijacking of the passenger liner "Achille Lauro" by the Palestinian Liberation Front in 1985 and the hijackers' murder of Leon Klinghoffer; and "Doctor Atomic" (2005), which covers J. Robert Oppenheimer, the Manhattan Project, and the building of the first atomic bomb.