Schoeck's String Quartet Op. 23 was premiered on 14 June 1913 at that year's Tonkünstlerfest, held in St. Gallen. It is cast in three movements and, like the Violin Concerto, is marvellously tuneful while somewhat aimless. The composer Hans Huber, Schoeck's elder by several years and one of the leading lights of the Swiss music scene, cried out after the quartet's premiere: “You're our Schubert!” referring to the work's effortlessly melodious qualities. Its layout is at times reminiscent of the piano accompaniments to Wolf's Italian or Spanish songs, almost as if Schoeck had learnt to score for quartet, at least in part, from Wolf's piano writing. Perhaps tellingly, Schoeck remarked of his quartet almost two decades later that “someone should arrange it for the piano.”

The St. Gallen festival also saw two up and-coming French-Swiss musicians conduct their own music: Ernest Ansermet with two orchestral songs, and Frank Martin with his Suite for Orchestra. More interesting in our context, however, was the debut of the composer/pianist Marcel Sulzberger. He was ten years older than Schoeck, though they had studied at the Zurich Conservatory at the same time. Sulzberger had then gone to study in Paris, where under the influence of Debussy he had become the first Swiss composer to cast tonality aside. Impecunity forced him back to Zurich, where his music was far too modern for local tastes (not for nothing did he later join the Dadaists).