Schoeck had experienced few real setbacks in the past five years. Admittedly, it was not always easy to find a music publisher, but this was understandable in postwar Europe when publishers were flush with money only if they happened to have a blockbuster or two in their catalogue, such as Orff's Carmina Burana in the case of Schott. And while Schoeck was not enjoying many international performances, he was privileged in that international artists of the calibre of Fischer-Dieskau, Dennis Brain, Annelies Kupper, Ernst Haefliger, and Elsa Cavelti were singing and playing his works. 1956 was the year of his seventieth birthday, and celebratory concerts were being organized across Switzerland. Corrodi was finalizing a new edition of his biography, and Vogel was spending hours meticulously preparing a thematic catalogue of Schoeck's complete oeuvre. But none of this made any difference to Schoeck's depression. He saw only amateurs and provincial talents among his interpreters, with the obvious exception of Fischer-Dieskau, and he moaned about the money being “wasted” on the publication of Vogel's catalogue. Once Schoeck was stuck in his black-dog days, nothing was going to rescue him, and every silver lining had a cloud. In early 1956, Hilde warned Corrodi not to visit before three in the afternoon, as her husband's moods before that hour were too awful to cope with. Early in the New Year Schoeck showed Vogel two new ritornelli and fugues that he had composed for piano.