Building on the discussion of earliness in the Prelude and Interlude, this chapter examines how Webern began to forge a narrative of earliness in relation to his own compositional development. It argues that this narrative solidified fully only as a result of the psychological dependency on Schoenberg that Webern developed in the years after completing his studies with him in 1908. This argument is grounded in an analysis of how Webern, between 1909 and 1914, increasingly distanced himself from certain influences that once had shaped his musical thinking, most notably those of Richard Strauss. That said, there is evidence that Webern continued to engage with his early compositions at later stages in life and even reworked parts of the String Quartet M. 79. In the light of these findings, this chapter suggests that the category of earliness is inherently porous, yet shining through the category’s porousness is its critical-heuristic potential.