During the period around 1940 Paul Hindemith wrote a series of sonatas, including one for just about every instrument of the orchestra. The oboe sonata of the series was written during the last few days of July, 1938. The work is tonal and neoclassical in orientation, meaning that Hindemith uses much Bach-like counterpoint in the work. The sonata does not follow the standard form for a work with that name. It is a quite short work (around eleven minutes) in two movements, the second of which is twice as long as the first. Hindemith builds the sonata by a principal of variants and continuations of a basic musical block. The first movement follows the schematic (a-b-a'), meaning a main idea, followed by a "b" unit that is a continuation and supplement of it, followed by a condensed variant of the first movement. The second movement is a string of very different variants on the same main theme: A very slow section, a scherzo, a slow recitative, a fugato, and a coda with an ostinato repetition of a tone series.

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