The theoretical courses are subdivided into elementary and advanced. The former class includes harmony, counterpoint, and the history of music; the latter class instrumentation, advanced orchestration and conducting, and strict and free composition. Both courses in composition are under the immediate direction of Dr. Parker, whose special fitness has been commented upon in another chapter. Dr. Parker requires every student in the composition courses to produce an extended original work. This usually takes the form of a sonata. The students are incited to excel in original composition as well as in artistic performance by the Sandford Fellowship, which gives two years' study abroad to the most gifted performer who shall also show marked ability as a composer. Allied with the department is the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, a complete and well-equipped organization of seventy players, which gives a series of concerts during the winter. It affords opportunity to the students of orchestration to hear their work actually and adequately played, and, when its quality warrants, to have the composition publicly performed. Several original works are thus produced every year. They are commonly overtures, but piano concertos and other works have occasionally been presented. The orchestra also opens to the student a gateway into professional life by admitting to it those whose performance on the violin or violoncello has been approved. Students of the piano, as well as of the violin, are allowed to rehearse with the orchestra and even to perform publicly if their fitness to do so has been demonstrated. The students give informal recitals from time to time and, toward the end of the college year, a concert, accompanied by the Symphony Orchestra. This insistence on the study of the theory of music and the demonstration of the theoretical principles by original composition as the only proper foundation of education in the art are the distinguishing characteristics of the Yale department of music, and the practical achievements of Dr. Parker and his students would seem to justify the soundness of the idea. In 1896 Edward MacDowell, the composer, was called to the chair of music in Columbia University. Mr. MacDowell, either because of his temperament or the limitations imposed by the university on his work, did not find the position so congenial as Dr. Parker has done at Yale. Instead of being inspired by teaching to greater feats of composition, Mr. MacDowell seemed hampered, and, to the great loss of American music, produced fewer and fewer of those fine works which cause him to be acclaimed as the greatest of American composers. He resigned the position in 1904, two years before his death.