The quintet begins with a muscular, motoric theme: a five-note motto that spawns related thematic variations and permutations across the entire work. Like columns that frame a symmetric structure, the first and last movements are related. A close inspection reveals that the last movement is precisely the first movement in reverse. Technically called retrograde or crab motion, it is the first movement played backwards. The slow movement comes second. Quiet, restful, it rises without pause out of the first movement with a sinuous theme in the cello. Each of the players joins in turn, imitating the theme in the manner of a canon or fugue. The clarinet is held in reserve yielding a powerful effect upon its entrance. The music features the slowing down and spacing out of the theme in the clarinet (known as augmentation) magically accompanied by the theme at its normal speed in the strings.

The central movement serves as the scherzo, in this case, coyly named "Schneller Ländler", a faster Ländler. The Ländler is an Austrian folk dance in a moderate triple meter that predates its faster cousin, the Waltz. Hindemith delivers a kind of whirling dervish, a fantastical dream of Ländlers, Waltzes, folk tunes and organ grinders in a colorful, energetic sweep. The brief Arioso is a startling point of contrast and repose. Exotic, sensuous and haunting, a single violin sings a shivering entreaty, a siren song from another world. Three simple, unadorned incantations from the clarinet enhance the singularity of this mysterious oasis of repose. The furthest point of musical remove in the whole quintet, its magic only briefly lingers before the strident beginning, backwards, becomes the end. This is music beholding itself in a mirror.

The quintet was printed and published in a revised version as opus 30 in 1954. Now, the first version of 1923, edited on the basis of the text of the Paul Hindemith Complete Edition, is published for the first time.

Instrumentation: String quartet and clarinet.