Schumann's sojourn in Vienna, beginning in the fall of 1838, and the months that followed his return to Leipzig in the spring of 1839 were dismal times for the composer. In September 1837, he had proposed marriage to Clara Wieck, but her father had brutally rejected the proposal and forbade contact between the two. Wieck rushed Clara off on yet another extended concert tour, which included a long and very successful stay in Vienna. In an attempt to salvage his engagement despite Wieck's objections, Schumann planned to move himself and his music journal, the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, to Vienna and to take Clara with him. In the fall of 1838, Schumann left Leipzig alone and began to explore musical life in the imperial city.

Schumann's hopes were quickly dashed. Although he made a number of musical friendships and immersed himself in Vienna's rich concert life, he failed to make much of an impression on the local artistic community. His attempt to reestablish the Neue Zeitschrift had to be aborted, as the Austrian censors, headed by one Count Joseph Sedlnitzky, insisted that Schumann would have to adopt Austrian citizenship in order to be allowed to publish a periodical in Vienna. He had also found Vienna a very unpromising environment for his musical ideas—too conservative and fickle. Though concerts and operas were given in abundance, the choice of repertoire was too old-fashioned or faddish for Schumann's taste.