In August 1939 Schoeck assured Werner Reinhart that he would complete the orchestration of Das Schloss Dürande in the following winter. That would have made late 1940 a realistic date for the world premiere. But Burte was already impatient. Just over a month after delivering the fourth and final act to Schoeck, he had complained to Werner Reinhart that Schoeck was composing too slowly. This was absurd, given that Schoeck had all along been setting his text with remarkable rapidity and that the opera was his longest ever—some two and a half hours of music. His real reason was probably to impress upon Reinhart that he, Burte, had now fulfilled his part, and that the blame for any future delay lay solely with Schoeck.

Reinhart wrote to Burte on 31 August 1939 to inform him that the opera was finished, adding that Schott was interested in the opera and that Burte should provide them with his corrected version of the text. He added: “The ‘Meschugge’ Edition has apparently also sounded out Schoeck. But I warned him urgently against any steps in that direction and told him that you would never give your libretto to them…. we should win Berlin for [the opera], I think.” (The “Meschugge” Edition is a reference to Universal Edition that was presumably meant to be humorous to the anti-Semitic Burte.) Schott did get to see the libretto of Dürande in the autumn of 1939 but promptly turned it down.