Webern's Op. 3 is a set of five lieder for soprano with texts from Stephan George's The Seventh Ring. They are the composer's first published atonal works. The Op. 3 songs also show Webern asserting himself as more artistically independent of his teacher, Arnold Schoenberg.

Viennese intellectualism was deeply swayed by Freud's writings on psychoanalysis. The reaction among artists was to challenge the public to explore its own unconscious reactions to the modern world. In spite of this necessary cultural exploration, Webern remained interested in a spiritual investigation that focused on humanity and nature as miraculous creations to be treated with the utmost tenderness.

Stefan George, a contemporary of Webern from the previous generation, was of enough like mind to excite the young composer to action. Though Schoenberg had used George's texts as well during this period, Webern would gravitate towards comparable poetry for the rest of his life. The themes of love for others and for life, regarded intimately, were the glue of his spiritual outlook.

The songs themselves sound intimate, almost to a painful degree. They are brief and require an almost whispering style of diction for the singer. The atonality is strictly enforced, with little recurrence of earlier material. Of course, this cannot be done to the letter because, without any recurring sound, there would be no coherence. The solution was to transform the aural recurrence in protracted or diminished forms, or to conceal the obvious qualities of the previously heard section in different high/low registers. Webern was fond of quoting his friend Berg on this compositional topic: "Never offer a literal restatement. Think of what the music has lived through."

Webern was also being subtly influenced by French symbolism and its musical manifestation, Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, which Webern had heard twice while job hunting in Berlin in 1908. The non-declamatory, recitative style heard in the opera suited the quiet elation he had to offer. George was responding to something similar in contemporary French poetry, but from a more urbane perspective. The lack of explosions, the absence of climax or rhetoric appealed to both Webern and George. Without these tools, the ambiguity left behind, the wonder, was part of the intended result. In Webern's music, the crispness of distinguishing sections is eschewed in favor of something more flora-like; moments of a specific musical character overgrew one another. The potential rhythms were deliberately clouded with non-metric melodies and accompaniments that did not clarify any beat.

The Op. 3 is the first of Webern's works to include his signature use of long, dissonant intervals, sevenths and ninths, in his vocal lines. However, there are also melodic arabesques, brief moments of narrow-ranged vocal lines that twist like vines and vegetable matter. The dissonance of these lieder is not enforced, as heard in Schoenberg's and Berg's works. There are no audibly conscious, expressionist shocks planted in the songs. Rather, they follow the consequences of Webern's creed "to render oneself intelligible."

The first item, "Dies ist ein Lied für dich allein," is a song "of childish longing...meant to move but you alone." The second, "Im Windwsweben," declares that the singer's romantic quest was a mere dream "in the wind's murmur"; "now I must live all day in longing for your eyes and hair." The third, "An Bachesranft," observes the first clues to the arrival of spring beside a stream. The fourth, "Im Morgentaun," recounts a visit in morning dew to see a cherry tree in bud. The final song, "Kahl reckt der Baum," likens a bare tree's straining for life through the winter to a dream rising with grace: "in pain...in ice it still hopes for spring."



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