Antheil started studying the piano at the age of six. In 1916, he traveled regularly to Philadelphia to study under Constantine von Sternberg, a former pupil of Franz Liszt. From Sternberg, he received formal composition training in the European tradition, but his trips to the city also exposed him to conceptual art, including Dadaism. In 1919, he began to work with the more progressive Ernest Bloch in New York. Initially, Bloch had been skeptical and had rejected him, describing Antheil's compositions as "empty" and "pretentious"; however, the teacher was won over by Antheil's enthusiasm and energy, and helped him financially as he attempted to complete an aborted first symphony. Antheil's trips to New York also permitted him to meet important figures of the modernist movement, including the musicians Leo Ornstein and Paul Rosenfeld, the painter John Marin, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and Margaret Anderson, editor of "The Little Review".