In 1894, a quietly colorful young Charles Ives entered Yale University. He enters with a solid musical foundation provided by his father and his community and a vision of what he thinks music can be. Horatio Parker, Ives's composition teacher, unabashedly informed Ives that his vision of music seemed vague, perhaps even nauseating, to the astute and cultured musician. Ives quickly developed anger toward Parker's traditional tutelage and rarely acknowledged Parker's positive effects on his compositions. Here begins the battle between new and old that Ives and Parker embarked on during Ives' college years, but the story begins and ends far from their four short years together. Horatio Parker was born in 1863 in Auburndale, Massachusetts, which was not a large town. by all means. From a young age, he took piano and organ lessons from his mother before traveling to Boston to study with George Chadwick. In Boston, he became a member of the Second New England School, along with John Knowles Paine, his teacher George Chadwick, Amy Beach, and Edward MacDowell. According to Nicholas Tawa, the goal of the Second New England School was to develop a classical American idiom that stood out from European forebears. Considering the important role Parker played in the group, one could argue that they did not fully achieve their goal. Looking at Parker's compositions (his famous oratorio, Hora novissima for example), there is not much that is typically American, or even non-European. The Second New England School may have partially achieved its goal, whether it was or not. lived to see it. The early New England school (beginning in the late 1700s) was developed by composers who had little or no formal training in the European tradition. They easily developed...... middle of paper ......ernstein and Charles Ives. The quest for an American classical language has been (and still is) a long process that is constantly being evaluated by new composers and compositions. As we become an older country with growing traditions, our music will certainly reflect its path. Works Cited1.Block, Geoffrey Holden and J. Peter Burkholder. Charles Ives and the classical tradition. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996. Print.2.Ives, Charles and John Kirkpatrick. Memos. Edited by John Kirkpatrick. New York: WW Norton, 1972. Print.3.Swafford, January. Charles Ives: A Life with Music. New York: WW Norton, 1996. Print.4.Tawa, Nicholas. The Coming of American Art Music: The Classical Romantics of New England. Westport, CT: Greenwood P, 1991.5. William Treat Upton (1967 [reprint]), Anthony Philip Heinrich: A Nineteenth-Century Composer in America, New York: AMS Press, pp. 3-4