Musically, its first phrase contains a segment reminiscent of the Polish religious song Boże coś Polskę [God Thou Hast Poland] (specifically, its section setting the words ‘Return to us our free Fatherland, o Lord’), which connotes the young composer’s patriotism and hopes for national freedom (he would soon volunteer for the Polish Army).

Song two, Helle Nacht, follows an equally lucid arch form but it employs a richer spectrum of musical means, including extended tonality in combination with elements typical of early twentieth-century musical modernism (such as the use of pentatonic and whole-tone scales), which foreshadows later developments in the composer’s style.