This moody and effective song cycle with chamber accompaniment is one of the least-known works of Paul Hindemith. It is not characteristic of the more famous works Hindemith composed at about the same time (particularly the compositions he called Kammermusik). Instead, it is in a dark, Expressionistic style, chromatic though maintaining the composer's avoidance of outright atonality. The verses of these six songs are by Georg Trakl (1887—1914), a tragic figure who took his own life by a deliberate overdose of cocaine in the early months of World War I. His poetry is marked with despair, disillusion, and only a faint hint of the possibility of personal redemption. His poetry was also set by Anton Webern in a style that is utterly dissimilar to Hindemith's. These songs are works of musical spontaneity triggered by the emotional qualities of the poem. Hindemith wrote the 20-minute cycle in just four days (February 16-20, 1922) during a break after having written three movements of Kammermusik No. 1, Op 24a. Unlike the Kammermusik, which has a bright, objective, and contrapuntal style, Die Junge Magd is set in a twilight world of resignation and repression. Emotionally, Hindemith's conception is an impressive feat of personal identification that is absent (German-reading commentators say) from Trakl's poetry, which mainly observes the "Young Maid" of the title from a distance. Hindemith set the poetry in the cadences of spoken German and maintains the "objective" mood of the narrator. But the six-player group (flute, clarinet, and a string quartet) that accompanies takes the role of the maid, relating her emotional viewpoint. The ensemble writing is primarily harmonic. Although the Baroque-like contrapuntal texture strongly associated with Hindemith's mature music makes some appearances, the writing is primarily harmonic, or features the instruments in parallel motion. There is also an unusual amount of musical onomatopoeia in the setting. Effects such as a rooster crowing, a hammer striking, or the keening of the wind are imitated. There are subtle motivic links among the songs. Hindemith premiered Die Junge Magd at the 1924 Donaueschingen Festival on a concert with Kammermusik No 1. The latter, brash and utterly disconnected from the prewar mood of the Trakl poetry, found great favor with the audience, but these works puzzled the same listeners. They were published the same year.

© Joseph Stevenson, All Music Guide