The first poet to offer Schoeck an opera libretto had been Hans Reinhart in 1908, whose “dramatic poem” Der Garten des Paradieses he had declined with all the tact necessary when dealing with a son of one of Switzerland's richest industrialists. It was not what he was looking for, claimed the composer—though in fact, it is full of undigested Wagnerisms, and words cannot describe its awfulness (a decade later, Arnold Schoenberg would turn it down with equal tact). But like many a composer fresh from conservatory studies in Germany, Schoeck was on the lookout for a possible text. Friedrich Hegar urged him, unsuccessfully, to complete the operatic fragment Francesca da Rimini by Hermann Goetz (1840–76). But in early 1911 Schoeck acquired a potential librettist of indisputably high calibre: Hermann Hesse. Their fleeting acquaintance of 1906 was renewed and deepened through the offices of a mutual friend, Alfred Schlenker, a music-loving dentist and amateur composer from Constance. Hesse invited Schoeck to his home in Gaienhofen in early March 1911 with the express intention of discussing an operatic collaboration. The topics he suggested included his novellas Der verbannte Ehemann oder Frau Schievelbeyns Männer oder die Familie Schievel beyn and Pater Matthias. Hesse further suggested Eichendorff's novella Das Schloss Dürande as a possible basis for a tage work, and at this time he even wrote a libretto intended specifically for Schoeck: Bianca, a tale of jealousy, sex, and murder set in Florence in 1400.