Ten years after Weber composed the highly successful Abu Hassan, he found a libretto he felt he could use effectively. He had always been attracted to the common Central European tale of the "free-shooter." It concerns the man who makes a pact with the devil in order to obtain magic bullets or arrows that will always find their target. No one is safe from them, not even the evil one from whom they came. The free-shooter is a damned soul, avoided by his fellows, unhappy, and his end is always violent. There were many versions of the Freischütz story, most based on the historical account of Georg Schmidt, a clerk who in 1710 was tried and convicted of trying to obtain magic bullets by bargaining with the devil. Johann Apel and Friedrich Laun had turned the story into the opening tale of their Gespensterbuch of 1810. The librettist for Weber's opera was Johann Friedrich Kind. From Apel and Laun he borrowed many innovations to the historical story. A love motive was added for the misguided hero, who wishes to earn the hand of his beloved Agathe, a virtuous and pious woman, by becoming the most skilled huntsman in the area. Also in Kind's cast are Samiel and Caspar, two representatives of Satan; Aennchen, an innocent girl and comic element, derived from the French opera-comique; and Ottokar, the benevolent Prince, standard Romantic opera fare. Hunters, villagers, and bridesmaids make up the choruses that bring to life the surrounding countryside. Kind was also invented of the Wolf's Glen scene, famous for bringing to life, through nature, all the evil forces of the universe and in the psychology of man.

Weber himself saw this opera as a battle between the forces of good and evil and planned the structure around a downward curve into darkness, which is suddenly brought back up into the light. He writes in his notes that many of the scenes take place in the evening or at night, including Agathe's big scena that takes place in the moonlight. He planned his orchestrations around two elements: the forces of evil and the huntsmen's music. The forces of evil he orchestrated in the lowest registers of the various instruments, bringing out qualities and timbres never before known in the history of the orchestra. Berlioz, Beethoven, and others admired his handling of the orchestra. The two main threads that form the background for Weber's opera are the German singspiel and French opera. It was common in German singspiel to use folk elements and melodies, but Weber takes this tendency one step further. Many of his melodies are derived from actual folk melodies, and others imitate folk melodies to such a degree that they became popular folk tunes after the opera became well known. The entr'acte was introduced from French opera. In addition, from French compositional practices Weber developed the "reminiscence motive," which reuses material to emphasize a mood or character. This eventually developed into the German leitmotiv.

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Weber composed Der Freischütz between 1817 and 1821, and the opera received its premiere in Berlin on June 18, 1821. Weber's overture to his opera Der Freischütz is one of the most famous nineteenth century works in this form. The opera breaks with the eighteenth century style of overtures that contained only suggestions of the motives that would follow. This work is also larger in scope and scored in broader, more romantic strokes that the equally satisfying, yet clearly more classical Leonore overtures of Beethoven.

In the overture, Weber juxtaposes the major and minor modalities in the key of C, which open for him a number of other tonal areas to explore. To move within these harmonies, he uses the diminished seventh chord to effect subtle and efficient modulations. At the same time, he uses various motifs from the opera itself, especially music from Max's first-act number "Doch mich umgarnen finst're Mache" and the triumphant aria "Süss entzückt entgegen ihm" of Agathe from the second act.

By combining dark orchestral sonorities with suspended chords, Weber sets the tone of the opera and allows the overture to have a more important function than usually occurred in opera. He further tied the overture to the rest of the work by introducing themes and motifs from various numbers, rather than merely suggesting them, and used the overture to develop those ideas. Without giving away the denouement of the opera, Weber prepares the audience for what is to come. In fact, the overture to Der Freischütz is a model that served as the standard for generations of composers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Outside of its performance together with the opera, the overture to Der Freischütz is frequently encountered in the concert hall. Given the resolution of the menacing music of Max with themes associated with Agathe, the overture is a self-contained and comprehensible work when performed on its own.

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