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Image:Horatio parker.jpg|right|120px|Horatio
Parker
Horatio Parker (September 15, 1863–December
18, 1919) was an United States|American composer
and teacher.  He was a central figure in
music|musical life in New Haven, Connecticut in
the late 19th century, and is also remembered as
the teacher of Charles Ives.

He was born in Auburndale, Massachusetts.  After
early study in the United States with George
Whitefield Chadwick and others, he went to Europe,
a common destination for a young American composer
in the 1880s.  In Munich he studied with Josef
Rheinberger; also in Munich he composed his first
significant works, including a symphony and a
dramatic cantata.  After returning to the U.S. he
took a succession of jobs as a teacher, organist
and choirmaster, mostly in New York City.  In 1893
he became professor at Yale University, a position
which he held for the rest of his life. Parker
died in Cedarhurst, New York.

While Parker is mostly remembered for a single
work, the oratorio Hora novissima, based on the
poem by Bernard of Cluny, he was a prolific and
versatile composer in a mostly conservative
Germanic tradition, writing two operas, songs,
organ music, incidental music, and a copious
quantity of music for chorus and orchestra. 
Influences in his music include Felix
Mendelssohn|Mendelssohn, Brahms, Richard
Wagner|Wagner, as well as Debussy and Elgar in
some works which he composed closer to 1900. 
During his lifetime he was considered to be the
finest composer in the United States, a superior
craftsman writing in the most advanced style.

In 1892, Parker composed the hymn tune
"Auburndale" in celebration of the laying of the
cornerstone of the new church building of the
Episcopalian parish he was baptised in,
http://www.parishofthemessiah.org Parish of the
Messiah. His father, Charles Parker, had been the
architect for that congregation's chapel; famed
Episcopalian bishop Phillips Brooks laid the
cornerstone. "Auburndale" was later published in
the 1918 Hymnal ("The Messiah Miracle: A History
The Church of the Messiah of West Newton and
Auburndale 1871-1971," privately published, 1971).

==External links==
*http://artofthestates.org/cgi-bin/composer.pl?com
p=129 Art of the States: Horatio Parker