'Ophelia')." This alteration is written in MacDowell's handwriting in his copy of the printed score.

When "Lancelot and Elaine" was published three years later it bore the sub-title: "Second Symphonic Poem." One afternoon in the spring of 1887 MacDowell and his friend Templeton Strong, a brilliant American composer who had recently moved from his home in Leipzig to Wiesbaden, were tramping through the country when they came upon a dilapidated cottage on the edge of the woods, in the Grubweg.

It had been built by a rich German, not as a habitation, but as a kind of elaborate summer house.

The situation was enticing.

The little building stood on the side of the Neroberg, overlooking the town on one side, with the Rhine and the Main beyond, and on the other side the woods.