'Land of Hope and Glory' features in its lasting form as the finale of Elgar's Coronation Ode for Edward VII

Hughie Cannon writes 'Bill Bailey Won't You Please Come Home' for a minstrel, John Queen

Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande has its premiere in Paris

Gustav Mahler marries Alma, daughter of the artist Emil Jakob Schindler

The tenor Enrico Caruso cuts his first phonograph records in Milan, beginning an immensely successful recording career

The Wizard of Oz, based on the book by Frank Baum, opens on Broadway as a musical to huge success

Sibelius writes Valse Triste as incidental music to a play, Kuolema, by his brother-in-law Arvid Järnefelt

Maurice Ravel sets to music romantic oriental poems by Tristan Klingsor in his song-cycle Shéhérazade

Italian tenor Enrico Caruso makes his US debut at the New York Metropolitan Opera

Leos Janacek's opera Jenufa, based on a play by Gabriela Preissová, has its premiere in Brno

Giacomo Puccini's opera Madama Butterfly falls victim at La Scala to claques paid for by rivals

Hughie Cannon writes the music and words for the song originally titled "He Done Me Wrong" in the US musical Frankie and Johnny

Alban Berg and Anton Webern study composition with Arnold Schoenberg in Vienna

Alexander Scriabin completes his Third Symphony, The Divine Poem, which is given its first performance in Paris in 1905

Australian soprano Nellie Melba makes the first of a great many recordings

Henry Wood sets 'Rule Britannia' in his Fantasia on British Sea Songs, providing a traditional favourite for the last night of the Proms

Karol Szymanowski and other Polish composers form a group that soon becomes known as Young Poland

The Russian composer Alexander Scriabin becomes influenced by the theosophy of Madame Blavatsky

Claude Debussy completes the three symphonic sketches forming La Mer

Gustav Mahler's cycle of five songs, Kindertotenlieder, hs its first performance in Vienna

Richard Strauss's Salome, based on Oscar Wilde's play, has wide success in spite of censorship difficulties

Franz Lehár's operetta The Merry Widow opens in Vienna at the start of an immensely successful run

In Charles Ives' composition The Unanswered Question the trumpet repeatedly asks 'the perennial question of existence'

Ethel Smyth's most successful opera, The Wreckers, is premiered in Leipzig

Frederick Delius's Walk to the Paradise Garden is added to his opera A Village Romeo and Juliet to cover a scene change during the Berlin premiere