Webern¹s Op. 25 songs are settings of texts by Hildegard Jone. After meeting in 1926, Jone and Webern began a long friendship, and for the remainder of his life Webern would use only her poems for his songs. Webern was attracted to the spiritual character of her work and to its frequent references to nature and sound. The Op. 25 songs were written in 1934, very close to the end of Webern's conducting career. These three songs are carefully constructed serial works. They form a cycle, with interrelated texts and a shared 12-note series. The songs are also highly integrated motivically as well: the 12-note series Webern uses the same motive (a semitone plus a minor third) three times. Since the use of the same single tone row in three songs, with no instrumental diversity, creates the problem of variety and contrast, Webern, as in the Op. 23 songs, uses different forms of the original series—retrograde and inversion—in the voice and piano parts. Notable also is the exchange of melodic fragments from voice to piano in the first song in the cycle, the waltz rhythms of the second song, and the agitated, syncopated rhythms of the third song.

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