However, Orff did not treat Hölderlin's translation of the play as a traditional opera libretto, but rather as the basis for a "musical transformation" of the tragic language of the drama of Ancient Greece.

King Kreon (Creon), who ascended the throne of Thebes after both brothers are killed in battle, decrees that Polynices is not to be buried.

The gods, through the blind prophet Tiresias, express their disapproval of Kreon's decision, which convinces him to rescind his order, and he goes to bury Polynices.

An extraordinary reduction of the structures of the pitch domain, in connection with the predominance of rhythmic patterns, has been described as an essential feature of Orff's late style.

Orff's renunciation of the grammar of harmonic tonality allowed the composer, as the musical equivalent of Hölderlin's archaic language, to turn the declamation of the singing voices itself into the vehicle for the dramatic action.

[5] As Pietro Massa has been able to show, an intensive exchange of ideas with the classical philologist Wolfgang Schadewaldt, the musicologist Thrasybulos Georgiades and the stage director Wieland Wagner, who had originally been selected as director for the world premieres of Oedipus der Tyrann and Prometheus by the composer, accompanied the genesis of Orff's operas on Greek drama.

[7] On the other hand, traditional instruments of the European orchestral tradition – such as flutes, oboes, trumpets and double basses – become entrusted in Antigonae and Oedipus der Tyrann with functions that had been reserved to rare percussion instruments in the orchestra of the 19th century: As special timbres with an almost exotic sound appeal, they appear reserved for the turning points of the work's dramaturgical structure.