Victor Fleming directs 17-year-old Judy Garland in the film of the famous musical The Wizard of Oz

Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears give a series of recitals in the USA at the start of a lifelong partnership

Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan becomes music director of the Berlin State Opera

British pianist Myra Hess begins a wartime series of lunchtime concerts in London's National Gallery

Igor Stravinsky moves to the USA from Paris, his home for nearly 30 years, and settles in Hollywood

Joaquin Rodrigo's concerto for guitar and orchestra, the Concierto de Aranjuez, has its first performance in Barcelona

The US jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker acquires the nickname 'Yardbird', or simply 'Bird'

Richard Addinsell writes the Warsaw Concerto as music for the film Dangerous Moonlight

Gene Kelly makes his name on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey

English composer Michael Tippett completes his oratorio A Child of our Time (not performed until 1944)

Greek soprano Maria Callas sings her first Tosca, in the opera house in Athens

Dmitry Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony, mainly written during the siege of Leningrad, has its premiere in Kuybishev

Leslie Howard directs and stars in The First of the Few, about the creator of the Spitfire, with music by William Walton

US choreographer Merce Cunningham begins a long creative partnership with the composer John Cage

French music student Pierre Boulez joins a harmony class taught by Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire

James Cagney stars in the screen musical Yankee Doodle Dandy, directed by Michael Curtiz

US crooner Bing Crosby sings Irving Berlin's White Christmas

The musical Oklahoma! launches the partnership of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II

English contralto Kathleen Ferrier makes her London début in Handel's Messiah in Westminster Abbey

British conductor John Barbirolli is appointed to direct the Hallé orchestra

Fancy Free becomes On the Town, a Broadway musical by Leonard Bernstein, directed by Jerome Robbins

Laurence Olivier directs and stars in a patriotic film of Henry V with stirring music by William Walton

Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring has choreography by Martha Graham

Benjamin Britten's opera Peter Grimes has its premiere in London, at the Sadler's Wells theatre

Igor Stravinsky's Symphony in Three Movements, premiered in New York, derives from music written for or inspired by films