Webern's Two Songs, Op. 19, of January 1926 are his first fully serial published compositions. They had been preceded by an unpublished children's piece for piano and the first song of two songs in Op. 17 from late 1924, but Webern spent a year working on his compositional technique before releasing Op. 19. The poems for the songs are taken from Goethe's Chinese-German Book of Hours and Seasons and both are two-verse, pantheistic hymns to nature, one of Webern's favorite subjects. Scored for mixed chorus accompanied by a small instrumental ensemble consisting of clarinet, bass clarinet, violin, guitar, and celesta, both songs are very brief; the first lasts less than a minute and a half, the second barely a minute. The first, "Weiss wie Lilien" (White as Lilies), starts with a short instrumental prelude followed by the countrapuntal singing of the chorus and ending with an emphatic cadence. The second, "Ziehn die Schafe" (See the Sheep), starts with a quick flourish for clarinet and violin accompanied by guitar, followed by the more homophonic singing of the chorus and ending with the whole ensemble slipping upwards into the ether.

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