MacDowell composed this work in 1884 and 1885, and played the first performance with Theodore Thomas and his eponymous orchestra in Chickering Hall, New York City, on March 5, 1889. The accompaniment is scored for two each of winds and trumpets, four horns, three trombones, timpani, and strings. In American Music since 1910, Virgil Thomson cited MacDowell as "our nearest to a great composer before [Charles] Ives.
