Die Müde (The Tired Woman) is the seventh in a series of short works for solo instrument based upon characters in Der Ohrenzeuge: Fünfzig Charaktere (Earwitness: Fifty Characters), written in 1974 by the Bulgarian-born British-Austrian novelist Elias Canetti (1905-1994). Canetti’s distinctive studies incorporate poetic imagery, singular insights, and unabashed wordplay to create fifty ironic paradigms of human behavior. This collection, begun in 1997, was inspired by the vividly surreal depictions of Canetti’s characters, and comprises twenty-two solo works to date—composed for familiar instruments such as violin, guitar, piano, and trombone, as well as less common instruments such as ocarina, cimbalom, glass harmonica, and carillon.  In Canetti’s depiction of this character, the Tired Woman “is no longer young, she is not all that old either, but old enough to sigh over too much work”; but when angered, “she flares up and starts yelping and screeching away in her language, and keeps yelping and yelping tirelessly… All her sentences end shrilly on a very high note… When she finally collapses on her seat, she peers around, her eyes begging for pity, and whimpers: ‘Tired.'”

Die Müde was composed in September of 2004 for saxophonist Eric Nestler, who first performed the work at the University of North Texas on 19 October 2004.